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Years after she’d finished school and put sport to the back of her mind, Commonwealth Games-bound Para-table tennis player Amanda Tscharke was watching her daughter compete at Tiny Tots athletics when a familiar face came over for a chat.
“Do you remember me?” the woman asked. “Are you interested in getting back into sport?”
Of course Tscharke remembered Cathy Lambert. The Paralympics Australia Classification Manager had been the wellbeing coordinator at Tscharke’s high school and Lambert’s husband had been her PE teacher.
Lambert’s question piqued Tscharke’s interest. Having competed in long jump and triple jump before acquiring paraplegia while in Year 10, getting back into athletics felt like a safe and familiar option.
Tscharke accepted and over the next two years, coached by Lambert, excelled in javelin, shot put and discus.
“I broke the Australian javelin record and then broke my own record again,” Tscharke said.
“But, in 2015, I missed out on the Doha World Championships because I had some hip issues. Cathy suggested stepping sideways into table tennis because of the exciting pathway and team spirit it had.”
It was a good move. After six months in the game, Tscharke played at her first national competition and two weeks later was invited to join her first Australian team. In 2018, she competed at the World Championships, where she was able to “see players at the standard I wanted to be”.
After setting herself to make the Australian Team for Tokyo 2020, again, health issues blocked her path. Now, after 10 years in Para-sport, including eight honing her table tennis skills, Tscharke has been named as one of Australia’s six players to contest the sport at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in July.
“I’m very humbled to receive a wild card. I’m very excited. It’s going to be my first Commonwealth Games,” she said.
“I went around it a bit differently. After my accident I just wanted to get back to school and get my qualifications. I got married, had children and then got back into sport. I think most people, post-injury, get back into sport and then look at other parts of their life afterwards.
“I guess it was always in the background for me. I’ve coached my daughter’s basketball team for a couple of seasons and I think, having the athletics experience before my injury, I would have ended up back in sport eventually.”
The self-confessed monarchist is excited to be in England during the Queen’s Jubilee but her focus will be on converting the hard work she’s put in to preparing for the Games, which included a slice of good luck.
“During the Covid period I was very fortunate because I have a table at home and during lockdown my husband would sit at the other end in a wheelchair and we were able to train quite a lot. I didn’t have work or school drop-offs and children’s sport, I was able to focus on my table tennis more than before.”
Tscharke joins a strong Australian team for Birmingham, including seven-time Paralympian Danni Di Toro, women’s individual Class 9 gold medallist and Class 9-10 teams silver medallist at Tokyo 2020 Lina Lei and Qian Yang, who won Paralympic gold in the women’s singles Class 10 and Class 9-10 teams silver.
Men’s singles and teams Class 9-10 silver medallist at Tokyo, Ma Lin, is also part of the team, alongside Junjian ‘Jessy’ Chen, who earned an Oceania allocation with gold at the 2019 Arafura Games in Darwin.
The Commonwealth Games will be Chen’s and Tscharke’s first benchmark multi-sport event.
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“Amanda’s done really well,” Table Tennis Australia’s National Para-Program Manager Sue Stevenson said.
“She lives in a rural area, she’s a working mum, she missed out on Tokyo only because she had to have an operation, but she’s got a bipartite spot for the Commonwealth Games, which is fantastic for her.”
The excitement around the team was sobered by the absence of Melissa Tapper, who will not get the chance to defend the Class 10 crown she won at Gold Coast 2018. Tapper missed out because, with two Australians ranked higher than her in women’s Class 6-10, she wasn’t eligible for a bipartite slot.
“Milly was just behind Lina and Qian in world ranking spots,” Stevenson said. “It’s really disappointing for her that she can’t try to defend her gold medal, but she’s working towards the World Para-Championships later this year.”
Tscharke was among many in the table tennis community and beyond who supported Tapper and her teammates at Tokyo 2020 as they achieved Australia’s best results in Paralympic competition.
“It was hard to watch [having been so close to selection], but it was such an amazing experience for the team,” she said.
“Seeing them perform like that was amazing. For those of us who didn’t get the chance to go, we were never isolated from it. We were on Messenger, all encouraging each other. That is the great thing about the team, even if you don’t qualify for a Games, you’re still a part of it.”
By: David Sygall, Paralympics Australia
Posted: 1 June 2022
