The Yukon Table Tennis Championships kick off Saturday to end the season, and decide who will represent the territory at the nationals this summer.

The action begins at noon on Saturday with team events and will be played all day. On Sunday games begin at 10:30 a.m. with adult novice matches.

Club organizer Dave Stockdale said they are welcoming a large number of athletes to the annual year-end tournament.

"It's quite a good turnout,” he said.

Stockdale said that 31 competitors are set to hit the tables this weekend.

Included in the 31 competitors, is three players from Dawson. One player is on Canada's wheelchair team.

Stockdale said it is the first time the Dawson club will be attending. The club is made up of 16 members.

This will be the last event of the year for the Yukon Table Tennis Club, but at least 10 local players will be heading to Alaska in a few weeks for the Alaska/Yukon Challenge.

Stockdale is undecided whether the club will be sending players to the Western Canadian Championships to be held later this spring.

He said in the past the Yukon has had little success due to the massive field of athletes the other provinces have to choose from.

"You're going against the bigger provinces in the west,” he said.

While that decision is still up in the air, Stockdale said they will use this weekend's tournament to decide who will represent Yukon at the National Championships that will be held in mid-July.

Stockdale is also looking further ahead into the future, to the 2011 Canada Games.

"I wanted to have a team at the Canada Games in 2011,” he said.

This season the table tennis club has had no girls come out to play, but Stockdale said that has changed in the past few weeks, as a couple showed up to practice recently. He hopes the club, along with coach Kevin Murphy, can develop those athletes into a potential girls team for the 2011 season, and the Canada Games.

"Hopefully we'll have a full team there,” Stockdale said.

Even without the development of a full team, Stockdale said it is nice to see new faces at practice.

"It's always exciting when we get a few new faces,” he said.

Stockdale has seen the sport grow in schools in the region. The club donated several tables to Porter Creek Secondary School this year and he says they have asked for more.

One problem is that many schools are unwilling to take on the storage of the tables when they are not in use.

"Storage is at a premium,” Stockdale said.

With the season coming to an end, Stockdale is happy with how things turned out.

"I'm pretty pleased with how things have been this year,” he said. "The kids did very well at Arctic Winter Games.”

The team swept the table tennis event, taking home five gold ulus.