Dedication wins Levy place at African table tennis championship

It has taken dedication, discipline and determination for Dean Levy to become the number one under-19 table tennis player in South Africa and the winner of multiple ping-pong tournaments.

This matric student at King David Linksfield High School will be representing South Africa at the African Youth Championships (AYC) in Tunisia this month.

But it hasn’t always been plain sailing for him, healthwise. Only a decade ago, Levy had his first seizure. “Then I had a brain tumour for about two years before we decided to get it removed in Cape Town in 2014,” he says. “After that, I couldn’t really play contact sports for a while.”

However, his cousins played table tennis, so he decided to “give it a go”.

Since then, he has triumphed seven times at the South Africa national table tennis championships – once in the under-13 singles, twice in the under-15 doubles, twice in the team event, and twice in the mixed doubles. He has also won the Arnold Classic Africa multiple times and the Gauteng, Cape Town, and Free State opens.

Asked about the key to his success, Levy says, “I’m just very determined and if I set my mind to something, I’ll try to work hard, be focused and driven to get better.”

Next month, he’ll be playing in the table tennis singles, doubles, team event and mixed doubles at the third edition of the AYC, a biennial continental athletics competition organised by the Confederation of African Athletics for African athletes aged between 15 and 17 in the year of competition.

Levy’s performance in the trials in February won him a place at the championships, of which South Africa topped the medal table in 2015 and 2019.

It won’t be his first time at this event. He played in its previous edition, in Ivory Coast, in 2019.

Levy plays four or five times a week at the JusTT Centre in Sandringham, Johannesburg, an establishment known as the Johannesburg home of table tennis. He also plays at school when he can, “but because of matric and everything, I’ve been quite busy”, he says.

Simon Lipschitz, co-director of the centre and a table tennis enthusiast who has played in national tournaments and in Gauteng’s premier league, says, “Dean has shown unbelievable commitment to the sport. He was in the junior programme of Maccabi many years ago, but instead of joining the junior programme like most kids do at JusTT, he jumped straight into our elite programme. We provide him with top-level players to train with as well as top-level drills and everything he requires to improve and play at that very high level.”

Levy, who also plays golf, albeit more as a hobby, says he loves table tennis because, “I’ve met a lot of different people through table tennis. It’s a very diverse sport. I go to tournaments in the Cape Flats and all these different places. Anyone can play it  – you just need a bat and a ball. I know there are 90-year-olds who are still playing, and three-year-olds who are playing. You can always get better.”

Levy himself has “a huge willingness to learn”, says Lipschitz. “When he’s at our centre, he’s constantly trying to improve and learn from all the coaches we have, to try and really push himself up to the next level.”

Levy aims to play at the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships in Durban. “That will be the biggest table tennis tournament I’ve been in,” he says.