The tournament director introduces himself

Most participants already know the tournament director team from past PPP tournaments, but for the first-timers I would like to introduce ourselves.

My name is Hilmar Heinrichmeyer (66), and as with all previous PPP German Open and all PPP World Championships after Pula 2022, I am the responsible tournament director.

I don’t (yet) have Parkinson’s myself and have been following the PPP movement as a clubmate of Thorsten Boomhuis at SV Vorwärts Nordhorn since the first World Championships in New York in 2019, including as a founding member of PPP Germany.

I’ve been playing table tennis at my club in Nordhorn since 1973, and I’ve been running table tennis tournaments since 1976, and their catchment areas have become bigger and bigger over the years. It is particularly important to me that the tournaments can start on time, that the tournaments run smoothly, that the participants are informed about the intermediate results and that the tournaments are run with sensible and fair seedings and draws.

I am currently the chairman of the tournament committee in the Ems-Vechte regional association, head of the seniors’ department in the Lower Saxony TT Association and head of the ranking list department in the German TT Association.

As in previous tournaments, I won’t be doing the work alone in Oldenburg – that wouldn’t be possible. Fortunately, I can fall back on a well-coordinated team that comes entirely from SV Vorwärts Nordhorn. Together with Dieter Benen (63), the district sports manager and Vice President of Sport of the Lower Saxony TT Association, I have managed the Nordhorn EUREGIO tournament for over two decades, which at times took place on 84 tables in five halls with 1,256 starters over two days, making it the largest open table tennis tournament in Germany.

Tabea Veldboer (26) is my colleague on the board of the Ems-Vechte regional association and has worked as a tournament director at many tournaments in Nordhorn, as has her brother Fabian Veldboer (31), who has been a mainstay in the organization of the Nordhorn Brettchen Open, the oldest German tournament for hardbat and sandpaper table tennis, for many years. The fifth member of the team is Maren Boomhuis (52), the only non-active TT player who will support us in the tournament management, especially with draws and data entry. There will also be helpers from Hundsmühler TV, who will assist us with various tasks in the tournament management.

The tournament is run with the table tennis tournament management software MKTT, the standard program for table tennis tournaments throughout Germany. Two other programs ensure that the data from MKTT is not only displayed on the monitors in the tournament management, but is also transmitted to the Internet: MKTT-Online and the MKTT-Live app. While MKTT-Online will be integrated into this tournament homepage, players should install the MKTT-Live app on their smartphones free of charge so that they can check the fixtures and results in real time.