On Thursday, May 24, Grade 11 student Daryn Erikson proved that his first place finish at last year’s inaugural Dylan Cripps Memorial Table Tennis Tournament wasn’t a just fluke.
After battling through 21 other participants over the course of nine school days, Erikson went head-to-head with fellow student Mark Fortin in the final round of this competition at R.D. Parker Collegiate.
While Fortin ended up besting Erikson in the opening round of the finals by a 11−9 margin, the defending champion rallied during the next two rounds and would eventually come out on top.
This marks Erikson’s second first-place finish in the annual Dylan Cripps Memorial Table Tennis Tournament, having beat his twin brother Derian in the finals of last year’s competition.
Of course, this tournament was originally organized to commemorate 14-year-old Dylan Cripps, who passed away alongside his father Shane during a canoeing accident in May 2017. This accident also claimed the lives of another father-son pairing of Conor and Liam Sykes.
Dylan’s mother Li, who attended the finals of the 2018 tournament at RDPC, told the Thompson Citizen that she was very happy to see that so many people are going out of their way to keep her son’s memory alive.
“After the hockey season he kind of devoted his time to doing something different,” she said. “And so he brought a ping pong table home and he was practicing during the school during lunch time and also at home everyday.”
Li went on to say that Dylan even wanted to start his own table tennis tournament called the “River View Invitational” before his untimely death. This fact encouraged fellow RDPC students Hayley Sylvester and Taylar Hanson-Oliveira to organize this competition in his name for the first time in June 2017.
“So it was good that his friends and the teachers carried that torch and keep it going. It means a lot to the family,” said Li.
