Ollie Stevenson
Nottingham’s Women 1’s have won the BUCS Table Tennis Championship every year in recent memory. This afternoon, Durham stand between them and an sixth straight crown.
To call Durham’s challenge difficult would be understating it, and the numbers from the previous few seasons are almost hard to believe.
Nottingham have won all six of their league fixture every year since at least 2019. Their only fixture this season that didn’t end 5-0 was against Edinburgh, which finished 4-1.
Remarkably, this is the first time since 2019 Nottingham have ever lost a match. They have won the past 7 seasons without conceding a single match, to a single opponent, ever. Not in the league, not even in the championships.
Durham will arrive in Loughborough having already been beaten twice, without taking a single match, by the team they need to beat today.
At the centre of it all is Jiaqi Meng. At the BUCS Individual Championships, she did not drop a single game en route to the Women’s singles title, before she then claimed the Doubles alongside Sophie Earley and the Mixed Doubled with Hanming Lin.
This was not a fluke; it was a repetition of the exact same hat-trick the year before. She is operating at a level that has no real equivalent in university table tennis, and she arrives in Loughborough in the form of her life.
The programme behind her is equally formidable. Head coach Kelly Sibley, a Commonwealth games medallist and Tokyo 2020 Olympian, has overseen every one of these seven consecutive titles. After last year’s win, she said it felt “incredible to have spent a decade at the top”, adding that the key was simple believing in themselves and playing to their strengths.
What makes the consistency so remarkable is that it has survived the constant roster turnover that comes with university sport. Players graduate, new ones arrive, and still the results stay the same.
Not to take away from Durham, who have earned their place here by finishing second in the league with three wins from six before beating Imperial 5-0 in the Quarter final and UCL 4-1 in the semis. They are not here by accident, and getting through a competitive bracket to reach a national final is an achievement in its own right.
But second place in this league this season meant finishing 9 points behind Nottingham, and the head-to-head record makes clear exactly how wide that gap is.
The honest question going into tomorrow is not whether Nottingham can win. Rather, it is, “can Durham find anything to make this a contest?”
Seven years of history suggests probably not.
But Durham have made it to the biggest stage in university table tennis, and finals do have a habit on producing results that form guides had suggested were impossible, so Nottingham will have to be at their best to extend their winning run.
Match Details
Where? New Victory Hall, Loughborough University
When? Wednesday 25th March, 12:00pm
How to watch? Live on BUCS YouTube as part of Big Wednesday coverage
Ollie Stevenson
Featured image courtesy of UoN Sport. No changes were made to this image.
