The one that today everyone knows and celebrates as Tennistavolo Castel Goffredo was born in 1977 in an oratory, like all the clubs at that time, where a priest more sporty than others, Don Giuseppe, thought about building a team to play and compete in a small province at this game called ping-pong, which everybody knew, to entertain the children and make them having fun being together.
The firsts organizational phases indicated the need of an escort, equipped with a car, who was identified in Diego Bonoldi, who after the first two or three trips became passionate about the sport and decided to be manager and coach of the team; practically a bit of everything what was needed.
Towards the end of the 1970s, the number of members began to increase. The first sign of good work being done was the fact that others decided to be volunteer managers of the team and became indispensable: the first was Roberto Stanghellini, who has been the president of the club for twenty years, then there was Matilde Fenotti, who was essential to strengthen the group.
The first major turning point took place around 1984 thanks to a little girl, a promising table tennis player, who didn’t betray the expectations and nowadays she is known to everyone as Laura Negrisoli. Thanks to her, the club began to show itself even outside the province’s borders, starting to win the firsts Italian youth titles.
Laura’s skill and potential stimulate the self-love of the club’s coach, who worked really hard to improve his technical and sporting knowledge. Little by little he was able, thanks also to the managers, to bring the women’s team to the first national league “Serie A”, something unthinkable a couple years earlier.
In the recent years the club got many members, especially in the youth field, who were able to rank their self in all national categories.
At the end of the 1980s, there was an extremely need to increase the management field to help the three, now historical, managers to carry out all club’s activities. Thanks to this need, we have the today’s Castel Goffredo: the club welcomed in its management Franco Sciannimanico and Elia Mazzi, because, as often happens in sport, their children has chosen table tennis as a discipline to practice. They are the two people who have since then represented the club. After some years, Franco Sciannimanico built his way to became National Counselor and afterwards, President of Fitet (Italian Table Tennis Federation), a role he took with great dedication and seriousness.
Since then, the whole club took a completely different set-up from how it had been thought before, especially thanks to the support of new sponsors, which the club were able to get thanks to the skills of the management.
In these years, the club has become a professional one thanks to numerous successes which made it a model to follow and envied in all table tennis environment.
In addition to the women’s team, which over the years has gained new talented players in its group like Alessia Arisi, Nikoleta Stefanova, Wenling Tan Monfardini, Mihaela Steff and Daniela Dodean, also the men’s team began to climb, to improve and to reach the first national league “Serie A”. Among the males, another boy from Castel Goffredo named Gionata Sciannimanico made it to the first men’s team after Laura Negrisoli for the women.
The successes also continued with the national team which has chosen players from Tennistavolo Castel Goffredo to represent Italy: the girls became European Team Champions (the entire team was made-up with the club’s athlete).
The club reached its peak in the years 2002-2004 when it won both women’s and men’s national first league.
The rest is known because, even greater, indeed historical, the women’s team won the 2006 Champions League: the first ever Italian team that were able to win such an international title (repeated with arrogance also in 2007). Even today it is the only Italian club to have won 2 Champions League.
At that time the club, in addition to both first teams, included also numerous other groups in the lower categories and gave great importance to its youth sector where, with the “terrible” Mutti brothers and Seretti, was getting noticed also at European level. Unfortunately, the club also had a sad moment: on 28th January 2008 the president Elia Mazzi died.
However, Tennistavolo Castel Goffredo continued its project and tried to be a reference in Italian and European panorama and it did that buying strong players like Guo Jinhao, Joao Monteiro and Mihai Bobocica guided by the new club’s coach Yang Min. In the 2009 season the new men’s team regained the title of men’s champions beating in the final the Paduan team of Este; they also repeated their self the following season by winning in the final against Verzuolo’s team and former Castel Goffredo player Valentino Piacentini.
The women’s team also returned to the top of Italy in the 2010 season, after losing the title in 2009 season without ever losing a match throughout the season. The team that the women were able to beat in the final is their eternal rival San Donatese with a 4-0 and a 4-1 in the championship’s final.
At that point the titles were 13 for the women’s team and 4 for the men’s one. However, the joys didn’t end there because the red-blue players reached the semifinals with both teams in Champions League, a historic milestone for the Sterilgarda’s club because no one has ever achieved such a prestigious result with two teams at the same time.
After a few years, where the club could achieved anyway several individual titles won by its young players at the youth Italian championships, in 2016 season great satisfactions are reached because, within 24 hours from one another, both men’s and women’s teams could win the championships final with Qian Cheng, Rech Daldosso Marco, Bressan Luca and Mutti Matteo for the men and Shim Se Rom, Tian Jing and Le Thi Hong Loan for the women. They were unforgettable moments of joy for the club and its coach Alfonso Laghezza who achieved something unique with his athletes, at the end of a technical path that saw him at the center of the growth of young athletes such as Rech and Le Thi Hong.
The years 2017, 2018 and 2019 the women’s team won again the championship’s titles and confirmed Tennistavolo Castel Goffredo at the top of the women’s sector thanks to Cui Chenxue, Tian Jing, Le Thi Hong Loan and Steshenko Tatiana (2017); Li Xiang, Tian Jing, Le Thi Hong Loan and Chiara Colantoni (2018 and 2019) and always with Laghezza on the bench, who was supported in the last couple years by the experienced coach Jiang Zilong. Furthermore, in addition to the championship’s titles in 2018 and 2019, the club have won also the Italian Cups, followed also by Italian Super Cups, in the same years.
Nowadays the palmarès of Tennistavolo Castel Goffredo is:
21 Women’s Championship’s Titles
2 Women’s Champions League
6 Women’s Italian Super-Cup Titles
6 Women’s Italian Cup Titles
5 Men’s Championship’s Titles
1 Paralympics Cup Titles
The rest are pages yet to be written…
