Scarborough pair Longman and Fell strike gold at National Championships

Mia Longman and Louis Fell put Scarborough on top of the national youth table tennis map in Nottingham, striking gold at the AOC National Championships and underlining just how far the town’s junior programme has come. For a town that has spent years building its table tennis base one player at a time, this was more than a medal haul. It was proof of a production line.

Longman’s win carried a familiar edge of expectation. She had already been identified as the under-11 national champion in 2019, and her latest title shows that early promise has not faded as the age groups have risen. Fell’s gold carried its own weight too. By June 2022 he had already represented Yorkshire, and his championship run confirms he is no longer just a promising local name but a player who can deliver on a national stage.

That matters because the AOC National Championships are not a side event. Table Tennis England describes its junior championships as a route for some of the country’s best young players to compete for national titles, which makes gold in Nottingham a real marker of where Longman and Fell sit in the wider youth structure. These are the events where reputations harden, rankings get tested and the next level starts to come into view.

Scarborough’s strength has been built in public, not behind closed doors. On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, the community ping pong table in Prince of Wales Gardens was officially launched with mayor Eric Broadbent, councillor Rich Maw, head coach Ashley Hodgson, and junior players Mia Longmann and Louis Fell all involved. That matters because it showed the town was not waiting for talent to appear out of nowhere. It was putting a table in the middle of South Cliff, giving young players a place to play, and connecting that access to club coaching through Scarborough Table Tennis Premier Club and its local development structure.

The results are starting to stack up. Longman has also been among the medal winners at other prestigious table tennis events in 2025, and that wider run of success suggests Scarborough is not relying on one standout generation. It has a growing pipeline, from the community table in Prince of Wales Gardens to the coaching habits that are turning juniors into national medallists.

For Scarborough, the real story is not just that Longman and Fell won gold. It is that the town now has evidence of a system producing champions at the same time, and those two could be only the latest names to move from local promise to much bigger stages.