by Brian Ash, Director Marketing Table Tennis Canada

The 13 year old faced a daunting first match in the Cadet Boys’ Team event. Representing Canada ‘C’ and partnering colleague Sunny Zhang, he confronted top seed, Costa Rica’s Alfredo Sanchez who joined forces with Russia’s Alexey Perfilyev.

A three-nil defeat was the overall result with Emile Joncas losing to Alfredo Sanchez. However, the scores are very encouraging (17-15, 11-9, 13-11) but the

Emile is a very serious student of the game and exudes maturity beyond his years.

One quickly senses that he understands what it will take to progress along the road to stated goals of international success.

Hailing from the small town of Terre Bonne, Emile trains in Laval and also at two Montreal clubs logging over 20 hours per week on the table. Every morning he serves 200 balls before school and many days he studies the techniques of his favourite players including Kristian Karlsson who impressed him so much at the recent Liebherr 2018 World Team Championships; he watched every one of Karlsson’s matches.

But Emile is also very aware of the mental aspects of the sport and works closely with Alain Bourbonnais in this regard.

At the table his preference is a backhand serve from the middle with varying spin and placement and an emerging backhand attack. Clearly the work is paying off.