Danilo Faso of Italy won three gold medals in the U15 category at the European Youth Championships. He also won both of his singles matches when Italy defeated China in the semi-final of the U15 team event at the World Youth Championships.

Spain’s Ladimir Mayorov became the European U13 singles champion. Alongside several other impressive performances, these were the most notable achievements for compass-supported players in 2025 in terms of results. More importantly, however, all of them also gained strong momentum in their development processes.

compass Managing Director Daniel Zwickl is proud of what the foundation’s players achieved in 2025. As well as Danilo and Ladimir, several others, including Görkem Öcal (Turkiye), Joel Isaksson and Siri Benjegård (Sweden), Adela Brhelova (Czechia) and Josi Neumann (Germany), won medals at major European events and the World Youth Championship. Daniel is satisfied overall with how the compass team’s players have developed their table tennis skills.

The annual application process also generated one new member for the team in 2025: Adela Brhelova, born in 2013, who is one of the most promising girls in her age category.

“We are very glad to have Adela on board,” says Daniel Zwickl. “We believe she has a great future, and it is very interesting for us to strengthen our relations with the ecosystem around her. We are also happy to add another girl to our pool of players”, Zwickl continues. “Equality is an important value for us, and we want an equal number of boys and girls in our team.”

A more data-driven approach to evaluating and assessing players has also been a high priority.

“We believe in objective data and analysis. Our data-driven approach is still in its infancy, but we can already see how it creates great opportunities for everyone involved in the player’s development. In addition to our close collaboration with Spinsight, we have started to develop our own data platform.”

Another recurring theme in 2025 was player health, led by Krisztina Szvitán. A former table tennis player, she joined compass at the beginning of 2025 and has extensive experience in sports prevention, rehabilitation and player wellbeing.

“Our players have an immense programme and also encounter a lot of pressure,” continues Daniel Zwickl. “We want to support them with experts in prevention and mobility, while sticking to our principles of prioritising the health and wellbeing of the athletes.”

compass conducted more than twelve training activities in small groups with compass expert coaches during the year, focusing on working with each of the supported players individually.

“The small groups allow us to pay special attention to each individual. We strive for a tailor-made approach and, to support this, we invite previous compass players, as well as prospects scouted during the year, to join us. Supported players work closely alongside their own coaches and compass expert coaches at various international centres in Europe.”

The foundation’s biggest challenge for 2026 is to support each player according to their specific needs, providing the very best support for each individual.

“Our aim is to support their development and prepare them to compete at the highest level in Europe, while also keeping up with the best players from China, Korea, Japan and other emerging nations such as India and Thailand.

We have said goodbye to some of the players we support, wishing them all the best in their future sporting endeavours. This is why our player pool will be smaller in 2026 than before. Therefore, our goal is to pay more attention to the players and their ecosystem. We will continue to improve in all areas, such as scouting at an early age, and support the development of athletes more efficiently. We will also strengthen the data-based development and health and prevention programmes that we started in 2025. It will be an exciting year.”

One new young talent is ready to join team compass in early 2026: nine-year-old Elina Hu from Switzerland has already shown great potential.

“Bringing Elina on board is part of our efforts to improve our selection programme. She comes from a family of table tennis players, so it’s exciting for us to start supporting her.”