Worthing TTC and the 1 Star Event: An Echo from the Base of England's Youth Table Tennis Pyramid

In the training hall of Worthing Table Tennis Club, Matt Porter sits facing a stack of entry forms. Outside the window, the West Sussex coastal town is settling into late afternoon. Porter is head coach here, and he has just done something few junior coaches in England dare to contemplate: organising a team competition for juniors himself, under the name Junior Team 1 Star.

He calls it the answer to a simple question: "What can we do for our boys and the other teams that haven't got in?"

The question does not come from medal ambition. It comes from a specific gap in England's junior table tennis system. And that gap, examined closely, mirrors how a non-traditional table tennis nation operates at the base of its pyramid.

The "1 Star" event is not an elite stage in the conventional sense. It is a supplementary event, club-initiated, sitting at the development tier of England's domestic competition system. The playing date is Saturday 10 October. The format uses two-player teams in a progressive knockout - meaning sides are not eliminated after a single loss, and continue to compete.

To understand why such a small event matters, it must be placed on the system's map. English junior table tennis runs on a three-tier pyramid. At the top sits the Youth British Clubs League (YBCL) - the national team competition for the strongest sides, played on national weekends at high travel cost. The middle tier is JuniorBCL and CadetBCL - more localised, cheaper, with more flexible formats. At the base sit club-created supplementary events, where "1 Star" was born.

Each tier has its own function. YBCL is the competitive summit. JuniorBCL and CadetBCL cushion mid-tier teams with regular match-play. The base tier gives teams unable to enter any official league a place to compete.

The dates reveal the system's operating logic. The JuniorBCL entry deadline is Wednesday 16 September. The CadetBCL entry deadline is Wednesday 28 October. The "1 Star" event falls on 10 October - between those two entry windows, catching teams that just missed the first and those weighing up the second.

Who takes part? Worthing, Jersey and Guernsey. Two of those - Jersey and Guernsey - are Channel Islands, outside mainland England. That exposes another dimension: geography, not standard, may be what keeps their junior teams out of YBCL. A localised event solves a travel problem the national league cannot.

Lisa De Poerck of Jersey Table Tennis confirms their boys' team could not enter YBCL this year. Rather than stop there, they turned to Worthing. The signal is notable: clubs are not waiting for the system to open its doors. They are finding another way in.

The event receives support from Table Tennis England, through its Events Team and a body abbreviated as TAP. Two individuals are named in support roles: Neil Rogers and John Mackey. In its thanks, the organisers note the "quick turnaround from initial idea to scheduled event" - a detail that says much about the approval process.

What matters here is not the scale of the event but its mechanism: this is a co-production model between national governing body and local club, where the club initiates and the federation enables.

The model has clear advantages. It lowers central cost, increases local ownership, and lets events happen where demand actually exists rather than where a plan is drawn up. When Porter speaks of developing junior players "both on and off the table", he describes a holistic philosophy - aimed at people, not just results.

There is a paradox worth facing. The progressive knockout format is designed to maximise each team's matches. That is the right choice for a development event: prioritising volume of experience over elimination drama. A two-player team stepping onto the court knows it will not go home after one defeat. For children still learning, that matters more than any title.

Yet the very existence of such an event exposes a structural problem. The official system is not absorbing all the demand for junior team match-play. If YBCL, JuniorBCL and CadetBCL had room for every team that wanted in, a club-created supplementary event would be unnecessary. But it is necessary. And the immediate entries from Jersey, Guernsey and Worthing show the demand is real.

From a counter-intuitive angle, this co-production model, however praised for flexibility, may be masking a capacity shortfall at the centre. When lower-tier events are handed to clubs, an unasked question lingers: does the governing body have the resources to run and sustain competitions at the base? An event launched by one passionate coach can succeed for a season. But it rests on a single point of support - a person. If Matt Porter moves on, or local resources dry up, the event may vanish.

This is the inherent weakness of any model built on individual goodwill. It works in the short term but is fragile over the long term. A sustainable system needs more than a few dedicated people. It needs a formal framework, a recognised calendar, and stable resourcing.

The Channel Islands lesson is even more telling. Jersey and Guernsey do not lack players. They lack access. Geography turns a national competition into a logistics challenge, and when travel cost outweighs competitive benefit, junior teams are pushed to the margins. A localised event solves that by bringing the court closer to the player. The core value of this model may not lie in the competition format but in its ability to solve a geographical problem - one any table tennis nation with remote regions must face.

From a personal angle, I have spent years following major tournaments and have often been swept up in peak moments. But events like this - small and quiet - teach more about how the sport actually survives. A tournament in Worthing produces no world champion. But it may keep a child in table tennis for a few more years, and in sport, durable attachment is sometimes worth more than sudden talent.

In the history of English junior table tennis, lower-tier events like "1 Star" are rarely remembered. They have no television, no big prizes, no international stars. But they are where the foundation of any table tennis nation is nourished. Comparing how different countries build junior systems, I have come to see that a table tennis nation's strength lies not at the top but at the base. The summit can collapse quickly. A broad, solid base holds up the whole pyramid.

In Vietnam, where I was born, and in China, where I live and work, I have seen two approaches to the same problem. One relies on centralised state effort, the other on community spirit. Worthing's event sits on the community side - a club taking on a responsibility the centre sometimes leaves vacant.

One moment stays with me. On an earlier assignment, I met a coach in a suburb who had organised a small tournament for his students because no suitable competition existed. He said: "I cannot change the system, but I can open the door of my training hall." That echo is the same as Porter's in Worthing - two different people, two different cultures, one reflex: when the system has a hole, fill it yourself.

Will Worthing's "1 Star" become a regular fixture in the English junior calendar? The organisers hope so, but hope is not a guarantee. What decides is whether it enters the official calendar, attracts more clubs, and maintains governing-body support.

If it succeeds, it can become a template for other clubs. If it runs only once, it will be a footnote in the chronicle of junior table tennis. Either way, the question it poses remains valid: when the official system is too narrow to hold everyone who wants to compete, who widens it?

Worthing's answer is clear. Do not wait for others. Do it yourself. And in a sport where patience is the most important skill, that may also be the most essential quality for building a solid foundation.

A pyramid is not built from the top. It is built from the bottom, brick by brick, by people who believe a child with a court today will be the one carrying the flame tomorrow.