Hana Goda: The 15-year-old looking to take TT by a storm

Before her opening singles rubber against India’s Sreeja Akula at the WTT Star Contender Goa, Hana Goda spent two days and many hours of it watching videos from their two previous encounters. Both times, Sreeja had beaten her 3-0 and Hana was eager to change the third time around.

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She did, knocking the Indian out 3-1, those couple of days immersed in self-analysis paying off.

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"Table tennis takes, like, 99% of my day,” Hana said.

Unusual for a 15-year-old. There is, however, hardly anything usual about this Egyptian teen.

Last May, when she was all of 14 years and 7 months, Hana won the 2022 ITTF-Africa Cup in Lagos to become the youngest ever winner of a Continental Cup title. En route she went past Nigerian legend Olufunke Oshonaike and compatriot Dina Meshref, two of the most accomplished names in African women's table tennis. Hana had also beaten them both in the 2021 African Senior Championships before falling one step short in the final.

“The African Cup win was definitely one of the big turning points for me. A year ago, I reached the final and was leading 3-1. And everyone was waiting, like, this is the moment Hana will be something. But then I lost," she said.

Hana will be something. So goes the consensus. The president of the Egyptian table tennis federation has labelled her a "miracle". The ITTF-Africa called her "the rise of a new dawn". At 15, she is only 10 spots behind Meshref in the WTT world rankings at 39. Back home, she can’t walk around the streets without selfie requests on a daily basis.

"Maybe around five (selfies) a day, depending on where I am," Hana chuckled. “I'm quite famous in Egypt. But I don't want to be famous! They say I'm famous, but I don't know, maybe!”

You indeed are if Mohamed Salah, the star Liverpool footballer and Egypt’s sporting icon, accepts your challenge for a game of table tennis on social media. “Maybe that's what got me more famous!” Hana quipped.

Hana first played the sport aged four, when she was too short to even reach the height of the table. “I would play on a cut table," she said. Her family had nothing to do with any sport while both her mother and father are doctors. “I just picked it up randomly," Hana said.

The base of Hana’s game was formed at the Al Ahly club, where she still trains and plays. The rise was meteoric. At the 2019 Egyptian National Championships, a 11-year-old Hana swept the Under-12, Under-15, Under-18 and the senior singles titles.

“My family, my coaches, my mental coach, my nutritionist, my fitness coach...they all work together to make it easier for me to do better,” she said. “They have always been supporting me and giving me the best environment to be who I am, and hopefully be better.”

Hana laughs about her lonely life and not having too many friends outside her table tennis circle. She is in class 10, and even though her mother wants her to stop fretting about studies and focus solely on the sport, Hana doesn’t want to give up on academics. “I try to be good at everything I do,” she said.

For her age, that’s some pressure to go with eyeballs aplenty. It does get to the youngster at times, she said. Like last month, after “putting in hours and hours in practice and also studying simultaneously”, she lost in the quarter-finals of a tournament in Tunisia.

"I thought, all this heartbreak, for what? I'm working so hard, for what? I have to put something more, but I don't know what more I could do,” Hana said. “But then we sat with all the coaches, and each one told me the negatives. There is still a lot to work on, but we tackled a few things over the last few weeks. And now I feel better that my hard work will pay off.”

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