Fastbats Table Tennis Club is quickly rising in popularity thanks to the hard work of coach Noel Chipman.

His involvement with the club has seen it expand throughout the Bradford area, introducing many local children to the sport.

Chipman took up the mantle after initially taking his son William to practise there, and his association with the club soon increased.

He said: “It used to be another club, Clayton Heights Table Tennis Club, but there was no coaching or anything. I took my son over and got involved helping out voluntarily. I took over in 2008, had a rethink, and it’s taken up to the 3rd year to build it up and have players of potential.

“I acquired a community table tennis coach position and I started coaching at different schools, but without funding. In 2009/10 we started building up the attendance to 15, 16 kids each session, and started to work with West Bradford schools and the schools sport partnership to bring table tennis into schools and built the numbers up.”

Chipman also paid tribute to the young volunteers that have also helped in the progress of the club.

He said: “We have a couple of young volunteers on board now as well who I owe a big thank you to; Laura Mitchell and my son, William, who is an ex-county player, comes with me at least twice a week.”

Fastbats, who are based at the Bradford Girls' Grammar School Sports Centre, now reach right across the Bradford area and their numbers are on the up.

Chipman said: “We have about 70 children out of school, and we have coaching sessions in Ilkley, Bradford and Keighley. We take one or two children to national competitions every month and we’ve actually established a junior side in the Bradford and District League.”

The club’s connection with the youth side of the sport has also seen them host the national junior and cadet leagues for the past two years on behalf of the English Table Tennis Association, something they’ll be doing again this year.

The club’s chairman, David Adams, said that he is delighted with how Fastbats has progressed.

“Noel has worked really hard, he’s capable of dealing with all types of people and we have such a nice mix of players. We’re a spider’s web club really and we’re building the numbers up, and from that will come the coaches and from that will come the stars.

“We also have one or two disabled players, one of which came foutth in the national disabled competition, and the self-esteem and prestige he gets out of it is fantastic.”

Adams also said he believed the club will be able to survive the impending schools sports partnership cuts.

He said: “That’s going in September, but we’ve anticipated that. You shouldn’t have a club that’s entirely grant funded. We welcome grants but we don’t need them and we are basically a self-sustaining club.

"We take our youngsters to tournaments in Blackpool, all across Yorkshire, which sometimes has to be done out of our personal pockets, but we also get a lot of parental support too.”