Table Tennis in Parma

Table tennis became very early successful and popular in Parma.
 Indeed the first italian champion in 1948, Lucio Sturani, was originary from our beautiful city and after during ’50 another italian champion became Gianni Rondani from Colorno.

At the beginning of ’70 the first official table tennis club was created in the city:TTClub Parma.
In this club grew many high level players very competitive in Emilia Romagna and all over Italy: among those players the strongest  guy was Stefano Lama and between girls was Alessia Arisi.
Stefano had an incredible natural talent and was selected for youth national team many times and had a pretty “romantic” style of playing even if it was very effective one.
He also has been playing for city team first league for many years.
 Alessia was absolutely the strongest female italian player during all ’90: she reached number 40 in the world , 2 times qualified for Olympic games (Barcelona and Atlanta) and was playing in Germany and France as well.
TTClub Parma won consecutive time italian team championship between 1979 and 1983 and until 2010 was playing with his strongest team in first or second italian league.

There was plenty of “volunteer coaches” during decades in Parma: people with lot of passion for our sport that after their job joined the club and developed young kids like Michele Vecchi and Vittorio Longi.

1989 is a turning point year when the club hire the first foreign professional table tennis coach: Joze Urh, slovenian player and ex- jugoslavia national player came to Parma and lead and developed the club for 12 years until 2001.
Leader of the first league team, with his coaching after some years some local players gain first places in national tournaments as Mattia Crotti, Emmanuele Delsante, Matteo Carboni, Luca Ziliani and Michele Molinari.
Between 2002 and 2010 head coach was Denis Emelyanov from Moscow, very clever and sensitive, plus after 2004 his friend Alexei Khorkov from Arkhangelsk who’s actually russian youth national coach.
In 1987 in Colorno was created a very small club thanks to a group of friends , Tabletennis Colorno.
In 1994 it changes location and turns as well his name in Tabletennis S.Polo because of the name of this village.

 In 2005 this club decides to grow and hires as a professional coach Emmanuele Delsante

From that moment start a very costant and progressive growth of the club in terms of quality and amount of players.
In 10 years players switch from 18 to 70, teams from 5 to 12 and in the lest 3 years the club has been always among the first 3 clubs in all Emilia Romagna. 
Moreover after 16 years without a single presence, Alessandro Guarnieri, a young player who entirely made his table tennis career in the club, has been selected for youth national team in 2014.
In November 2015 the club moves his daily activity in Parma making every day training in a wonderful sport-hall in Parma in sportcenter “E.Negri” signining an agreement with majority of Parma and following a common project with judo and fencing teams who also had their training hall in that place.