(by Patryk Zyworonek)
In the last 3 months I had 5 WTT Events, Polish Championships and my last league matches. My first tournaments were the WTT events, the first one was in Montenegro, it was a Star Contender tournament and only the best 32 players could play. In my group, I had a player from Taipei, Portugal, and Austria. The first match was with the Taipei player, I put up a good fight but I lost the match 1-3. I needed to get a win against the Portuguese player to advance from the group. I played a very good match and won 3-1. I needed to win against the Austrian player to be sure that I would advance. I had a good tactic and won the match to advance to the round of 16. In the round of 16, I played a Chinese player, a very good defender who was very consistent. I wasn’t able to finish him and I lost the match. Right after this tournament I flew to the tournaments in France and Belgium. In both of these tournaments I played in the U-15 and U-17 categories. In Belgium I advanced first in both of the groups but in the round of 32 I lost to a Chinese attacker and a Dutch player. I was not happy with this tournament. The tournament in France was better. While the results were not the greatest, I was mentally better prepared and my tactics were a lot better. I had a couple of good wins and some close losses against good players. I came back to my club to practice and prepare well for the Polish Championships. Championships were good; I came back with gold in the teams and silver in the doubles. In the singles category I was close to get the medal leading 3-1 and 10-6 but couldn’t get it done.
Around 2 weeks after these loses I had to focus on the last two WTT events before heading home. Before the tournament, we had a national team group camp. During the whole camp I could only train 4 times because I had a knee injury. While I did not feel that I had a good opportunity, WTT in Czech and Sweden were next. In Czech from the first match, I felt that the problems with the knee didn’t go away. I had to take a seat after each set to letmy knee rest. During the tournament I was very relaxed playing well in the U-17 and U-15 categories. In the U-17 I lost to Nandan Naresh, 1-3, in the Round of 32. The U-15 event was going very well for me going match by match and before I knew it I was playing in the finals against my Polish friend. I had never beaten him but I had a good strategy. I had played well I beat him 3-0 and won my first WTT Event.
A week later I played a Contender in Sweden I was very disappointed of my U-17 performance but the U-15 helped me get my confidence back. I got the silver medal coming back 2-2 and 3-9 in the round of 32 and winning 3-2, 11-9 in the quarterfinals. Unfortunately the Japanese was too strong in the finals. My coach saw that I improved in the past couple of months and he saw my good results so he put me in the first league for 7 matches. My final record was 5-2 which was very good. Now I am training for the WTT in WV and for the World Cadet Championships.
