In an effort to showcase the unique characteristics of each of our member schools, we will be featuring a different college table tennis club on our web site monthly.
This month, NCTTA President Karen Chang interviewed U. Penn Club president Eu Han Lee to learn a bit more about their club.
1. I know Penn has been interested in joining LNITT/NCTTA for the past few years, but haven't done so until now. How did the club get started, and how has it developed and/or changed in the last few years?
The Penn Table Tennis Club at Penn was discontinued a couple of years ago because it ws inactive. However, a couple of friends and myself who wanted to play competitively decided to start a table tennis club to promote the sport at Penn. Perhaps the driving motivation was that we knew that there were untapped talents out there in the Penn community, and that we could encourage table tennis fans on campus of different skill levels to meet at a common time to interact, have fun and hopefully get to a point where they will be able to meet on a more frequent basis outside the dedicated club session.
Hence, we decided to restructure and revive the club, and this took place sometime in April 99. The fact that the club is still new and no longer recognized by the Penn Sports Council a couple of years ago means that the club till date has not qualified the criterias to receive university funding, until the academic year 2000.
The club started off with approximately 10 members, and have expanded to about 60 members till date. The club members are made up of undergraduates, graduates, post graduates, and also professors. The club also encourages members to bring in guests to make the social aspect of table tennis more interesting.
2. About what level of ability are your players at?
The ability of players ranges from beginners all the way to university players. Most of the players here are social players, and are really here at the club just to interact and have a good time. The interaction of these players with the university players helps improve the standard and interest of table tennis at Penn.
3. U Penn uses an interesting "Club Point System" to run regular competition within the club. Can you tell me more about how it works, and how successful it is?
The main problem that we have is that we have approximately 60 players, and 4 tables at the venue reserved for the club meetings. We approximate that 30 players come by per session, hence, the challenge was to maximize the number of matches that could be played during the 2 -3 hour session. Hence, a point system was designed. Here is a brief description on how the point system works.
There will be four tables, T1, T2, T3, T4 (left to right). Winners will constantly move in the right direction after every match (say from T1 to T2, T2 to T3 etc) and losers in the reverse direction. Losers on T1 will exit and to make way for a new player to get into the "flow" . Similarly, winner on two consecutive matchs on T4 will make way for the next player in line for T4 (from T3), and queue to wait for his turn at T4 again. For all tables, we restrict the number of games to be one game per match.
The point allocation works as follows:
Loser (any table) : 1 point
Winner of T1 : 2 points
Winner of T2 : 3 points
Winner of T3 : 4 points
Winner of T4 : 5 points
At every table, a notebook is provided where players record their games. Points are calculated by a committee member and updated in spreadsheet on a weekly basis. Members with the highest points will potentially be selected to represent the school, and seeded for tournaments.
The system was implemented in October 99. The system was tested and modified accordingly to produce the best results. We believe that the system also encourages members to attend the session, as losers are also awarded points, which will give them advantage over those who do not attend the sessions at all). The point system has really proved to be rather effective - we have been able to average approximate 50 matches within 2 hours.
This system has worked well for the club and we intend to continue to implement it until we have found a better scheme.
4. How's the male/female ratio within the club? Do you find it difficult to attract females to play?
Approximately 90% of the members are males. However, we have actually have increasing interest from female students -till date we have about 6 members who are female members.
5. Does the club encounter any particular obstacles (e.g., drawing new people in, keeping old players interested, improving people's level of ability, being recognized as a sport on campus, etc.)?
Right now, due to the large number of members and limited number of tables, attraction of new members has not been a major concern. However, there is definitely a growing interest in the sport here at Penn, and promotion of the club and drawing of new members is done via word of mouth.
We constantly encourage our members to tell their friends about the club, and this has proved very effective since the club started. Hopefully, we will be able to budget to purchase more tables at the training venue to accommodate this increasing popularity of the sport here.
Eu Han Lee is currently a junior, majoring in Finance, Information Systems and Math. While he has no official rating, he estimates his rating to be around 2000.