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The Joola Hungarian Cadet Open will be held in Tata, a town north western of Hungary from Friday 15th to Saturday 17th January 2010. Hungary starts the year in table tennis calendar as it is steeped in the history of table tennis and has its own special place in the ITTF Global Junior Programme.
In 2002 the country staged the first ever ITTF Cadet Challenge in Tiszaujvaros. China emerged as the dominant force with two teenagers from that country gaining the “Most Valuable Player” awards.
Cao Zhen won the female award whilst the male commendation went to Zhang Jike; since those days Cao Zhen has won five Women’s Singles titles on the ITTF Pro Tour whilst Zhang Jike has yet to win an ITTF Pro Tour Men’s Singles crown but arguably he has won the toughest title of all.
In 2008 he won the Men’s Singles title at the China National Championships and in 2009 he has impressed, even getting to the semi-finals of the recently concluded Pro Tour Grand Final in Macau.

The Joola Hungarian Cadet Open has attracted 64 boys and 65 girls from 22 countries. France fields an impressive trio in the Cadet Boys’ events with Enzo Angles, Tristan Flore and Alexandre Robinot being on duty but the name that stands out is that of 14 year old Bernadette Szocs from Romania.
She is the top seed in the Girls’ Singles events and is maintaining Romanian traditions of table tennis excellence. At the Volkswagen World Junior Championships in Cartagena de Indias, alongside Poland’s Magdalena Szczerkowska she led the European challenge.
She reached the quarter-final stage of the Girls’ Singles event beating Peru’s Angela Mori, Germany’s Anna Krieghoff and Japan’s Misaki Morizono but China’s Wu Yang, the eventual champion, ended her progress there.