"Miss Little"… undefeated

(Baonghean) - During the days of table tennis matches within the framework of the Phu Dong Sports Festival of the whole province, the gymnasium of Dang Thai Mai Secondary School (Vinh City) is always packed with people cheering. Among them, all eyes are always on tennis player Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, a girl with a pretty, cute face but with many strong, intelligent shots and is the champion of both the women's singles and women's doubles events of the primary school age group...

The tournament ended more than a week ago but meeting Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy again, she still felt happy. During more than a month of traveling with the Phu Dong Sports Festival, from the qualifying round at school, in the city, then in the Nam Dan, Hung Nguyen, Thanh Chuong, Nghi Loc, Vinh City clusters and then to the final round in the province, Thuy had the feeling of participating in a real tournament for the first time. Not only that, each match was a tense competition because all of Thuy's opponents were older than her in both age and physical strength. However, no one could have expected that Thuy, who was small and had no competition experience, could be so excellent with an undefeated record in all matches...

Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy (middle) and athletes at the 16th Nghe An Province Phu Dong Sports Festival.

Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy is a third grader at Le Loi Primary School this year and she has only been familiar with table tennis for nearly a year. When deciding to let her learn this subject, Thuy's parents were not very ambitious, simply because once while reading the newspaper, her mother read the information that "playing table tennis can prevent nearsightedness and train children to be agile and flexible". Therefore, not only Thuy but also her older sister Nguyen Thi Ha Trang participated in table tennis very early and won second prize at the Phu Dong Sports Festival of the province 4 years ago. As for Thuy, on the first day she came to the City Sports and Physical Education Center to register for classes, she stood at the table tennis table "so pitiful to look at". However, Thuy's teacher was surprised when he asked Thuy to practice juggling the ball. The exercise only required juggling 15-20 balls to qualify for admission. But Thuy only once managed to juggle 36 times without dropping any.

Later, following Thuy's training process, her coach, Mr. Minh, said that Thuy has a special talent for table tennis, especially in catching the ball, predicting and making many tricky, intelligent passes. Therefore, it is easy to understand why Thuy entered the class after many members in the class and was the shortest and lightest, but in just a short time, she caught up and surpassed her older siblings and became the teacher's "favorite student". Her parents, teacher Nguyen Thi Thu Ha and Mr. Nguyen The Dung, saw that their child was passionate about table tennis and were very supportive. Every week, Mr. Dung took his child to the center to practice 3 times. On days when Ms. Trang was not busy with extra classes, the whole family went to the field and practiced together. At home, they also bought a table tennis table for the 3 of them to play together. On the most "exciting" days, they had to play for 10 seconds and the father was always the "defeated" one because he was physically weaker. My mother is happy because since her child started exercising, she "is more confident and eats better, and doesn't watch TV as often as before."

Her family were also the fans who were by Thuy's side throughout her competition. This was the first official tournament that Thuy participated in as an individual and was the most important tournament in the Education sector, so needless to say, her family was worried. The worry was multiplied when she learned that Thuy was the youngest. However, unlike her parents' mood, Thuy played very comfortably, and she won almost every match. Thuy only lost 1 set in the match against a 4th grade athlete from Nam Dan district due to an unexpected fall, but she then won convincingly with a score of 4-1. She also remembers the women's singles final, thinking it would be the most "tricky" match, but it was actually the easiest because her opponent only had one "double-play" ball and she easily won completely. In the women's singles, Thuy was paired with Vo Linh Na, a classmate and classmate at the training center, so the two of them got along very well. Therefore, it was not surprising that both of them passed the rounds at school, in the city, in the cluster and then excellently won the first prize in the province.

Not only is Thuy good at sports, she is also an excellent student in her class, and according to her pride, she studies “on par with the class monitor”. In her class, Thuy also holds the position of deputy class monitor in charge of studying, an exemplary cadre respected by her classmates. Talking about her youngest daughter, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha affirmed: Let her study, let her be passionate in a natural way and will not object if she still really wants to stick with it…

Thuy came to table tennis, to sports and to the championship title also starting from a very simple point of view!.

My Ha