Dedicated volunteer Craig Mehew had a direct hand in winning not one, not two, but THREE Cloudathlete Pride of Table Tennis Awards this year – but he says it’s all about the team effort.

Craig is from St Austell TTC in Cornwall and, as well as contributing to the Club of the Year and Inspirational Story of the Year Awards, was also named as the ‘blue riband’ Volunteer of the Year.

His citation in the Volunteer of the Year category reads as follows:

Craig Mehew has been central to St Austell TTC becoming a thriving club, leading community partnerships and delivering programmes including the Ultra League for Adults with a Learning Disability, schools pathways and wellbeing initiatives such as Ping Mind. Working intensively in St Austell with partners such as Wild, Wonder and Wisdom and Mencap, and gaining investment Craig has created and delivered an outreach programme across eight locations. His energy and leadership have helped expand participation in St Austell and now he is working across the county.

Craig is the development and welfare officer for the club, as well as the development officer for the county, and first got involved in table tennis after injury curtailed his football career.

“My family going back generations have always played table tennis, so me and my brothers and my dad created a team, and I’ve just played ever since,” he explained while attending the Cloudathlete Pride of Table Tennis Awards ceremony during the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals London 2026 Presented by ACN, where he and other shortlisted nominees also had the chance to watch England in action.

“As a club we won three awards today, which is amazing. We won inspirational story which was for the work we carried with young carers, giving them an opportunity to play table tennis and to help them manage their emotions and just to make friends as well, so it’s a really cool project.

“The second award was club of the year. We’re really proud of the work that we’ve done, growing from five members to over 200 in the space of two years. It’s just incredible, and reaching out within learning disabilities, women, juniors, doing a lot of work with schools as well.

“It’s really important to highlight that it’s a big team effort, so we have a committee of eight people and all of our members and our partners that we work with are key to the success we’ve had the last couple of years.

“And then the last award was Volunteer of the Year that I won, and I was really proud of that. Again, really important to note that these awards are a big team effort. My name and our chairman Alan Brooks are kind of at the front and there’s a lot of work that goes on in the background.

“We’re not really in it for the awards but it’s nice to be recognised and, hopefully, it will inspire our juniors at our club as well to take on more and do this kind of thing.

“So, super proud of these awards that we’ve won. It’s a really cool day, and we’re just really proud.”

As we celebrate Volunteers Week, we are shining a light on the winners and runners-up in the Cloudathlete Pride of Table Tennis Awards.

The Pride of Table Tennis Awards are Table Tennis England’s scheme for recognising and rewarding the time, effort and dedication of the volunteers in our sport.

They are delivered in partnership with Cloudathlete, who are sponsoring the awards for a second year, as part of their commitment to grassroots and participation sport.

About Cloudathlete

Cloudathlete is not another point solution. It is a connected platform that covers the full operational surface of a sports organisation — from the moment an athlete registers to the moment their result appears on a world ranking. It replaces disconnected tools with a single, connected infrastructure designed around how sport actually operates — from membership and competitions to events, communications and data.

Built specifically for sport’s national governing bodies and federations, Cloudathlete replaces fragmented legacy systems with a single connected platform that replicates each organisation’s unique operations, structures and workflows without the limitations of off-the-shelf software or the cost of bespoke development.