This is my journey of when I decided to switch sports, which ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. However, I picked enjoyment at the end of it. The switch from football to table tennis was going to be hard as I loved playing football but I knew it was the right thing to do to. When playing table tennis, I was getting better and better each time I went but when I played football, I was feeling like I was not going to achieve much.
The football team I was playing for was Lochar Thistle I had played for them since I was the age of 5 and I left the club at the age of 12. I played right full back the whole of that season as that’s where I played my best football. Therefore, to be in that position I had to be strong in the tackle which I was and could always get forward from defensive positions. I could also always put a decent ball in the box. Being part of a team is a thing you miss even just things like the banter in the changing rooms and we were the best team in our league (as we were top of the league for the majority of the season). I believe we were unbeaten as well. We had a good team spirit as we believed we would win any game we went into the confidence was high. To quit football was a major decision for me but my Dad and I knew it was the right decision.
How I started to get into table tennis was by playing the game on holiday with my dad in Majorca. I thought to myself 'I quite like this' and so I said to my dad and he revealed there was a table tennis club on Shakespeare Street in Dumfries. I was about 11, coming 12, at this point, so when I came home from Majorca my dad took me to the table tennis club. From then on I started going on Friday nights while still playing football. I played both of the sports for a good year. As I progressed getting better and better at table tennis that’s when football became a problem because I was starting to play more and more nights and discovered that if I wanted to make it to the next level, then I needed to choose football or table tennis the decision I then made was table tennis.
The choice I made was a really important one because football is what I enjoyed doing for most of my life but table tennis was the sport I could achieve something from. From the day, I quit football, I ended up playing table tennis 3 to 5 times a week and improving week after week-getting better and better. My coach, Dylan de Silva, trained me to become an attacking player: to have power in my shots and so in training, I had to put in the work fitness and skill-wise.
As I got into a decent level of the game, my coach decided I should go and play competitions and get experience from them. These were competitions in Scotland; I was already the best player for my age in Dumfries. I won a few competitions, kept getting better and I felt I could go on and be a player at a high level. My dream was obviously to play for Scotland, which was a big target to aim for, but I had to aim high. Each year at the club championships, I won around five trophies, as I was now one of the best players in my club. When I was 13, I won most improved player out of the whole club. In that year I won all of my games in division 2 (40/40) so people at the club moved me up to division 1. I was delighted about having a tougher challenge in front of me. Not only did I just get into division 1 I got put with the best player in the club and we became partners with which was Danny Bajwa. We won the league that year and I won most of my games. As a pair, we won all of our league games.
I am hoping to get into the Scotland team this year as I was chosen to go to the Scotland junior training and around the same time got into the top ten in Scotland for cadet boys (under 15 boys). At the end of that year, I was missing playing football so I decided to make a change.
This change was a massive decision for me, as I believe enjoying yourself is more important in your childhood than doing a sport you may be better at but not enjoying yourself doing that particular sport. The decision I made was to switch from table tennis back to football. One reason I decided this was to go back to playing sport with my friends and just to play football the game I loved. It was tough after having putting a lot of work into table tennis but I just fell out of love with the sport, I was uninterested in table tennis at the end. I was eager to get back into football so I asked my dad and he did not approve at first but eventually let me join football again. The game I have loved all my life I finally played again. I am sure I will still play a bit of table tennis at some point in the future. I am happy with all the decisions I have made, am happy I had decided to switch to table tennis as it made me realise how much I love football. I now play for Terregles AFC in the Dumfries and Galloway football league.