Snow in the South Island is causing havoc with travel arrangements for the teams coming to North Harbour for the NZ Junior table tennis championships.

Already the Otago team has had to withdraw as the airport is closed due to snow and the next available flights are not till Wednesday evening.  Canterbury teams have rescheduled flights for Monday evening but as the airport is still closed, there is no guarantee they will arrive on time either.

 The team events start on Tuesday and Auckland teams will be looking to make a clean sweep of all team events if they can.

There are 6 categories:

• Under 18 Boys and girls
• Under 15 Boys and girls
• Under 13 Boys and girls.

Their main opposition will come from the usual contenders Wellington, Canterbury and host North Harbour.

191 players have entered the team’s event starting with grading matches on Tuesday morning.

 The individual stars to watch out for include:

Kevin Wu (Auckland), who has been jet setting around the world in order to further his dream of becoming NZ’s first fully professional player since the likes of Li Chun Li and Peter Jackson. He is recently back from the Oceania Cup for senior men where he made the quarter finals.

Roger Rao (Auckland) who is the 2010 NZ Open Mens Champion, now 14, the youngest NZ champion in history

Ocean Belrose (Tahiti) pictured above, is another experienced international player who has had extensive play in France and is widely regarded as the best ever player to come out of Tahiti.

Angie Guo (Auckland) is another who has spent a lot of time recently training in China so it will be interesting to see how she goes against the local girls