Texas Wesleyan to host NCTTA 2017 South Regionals

This weekend at Texas Wesleyan, the New York Yankees of college table tennis, will play host to the NCTTA South Regional Championships. Twelve of the best schools in the South (Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Georgia) will descend upon the Texas Wesleyan University Fort Worth campus to battle for the chance at school glory.  It will be live streamed too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVhx7C6c-zM

School glory isn’t the only outcome sought by these men and women paddlers; National Championship qualification is on the line with the Top three men’s/coed teams qualify; Top 2 women teams along with the top 8 men singles and top 4 women’s singles. The TMS 2017 National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships is NCTTA’s premier event and is the Super Bowl and World Cup of Collegiate Table Tennis rolled into one! The NCTTA South Regionals is paramount to continuing in the College Table Tennis post season.

The South Region features Texas Wesleyan winner of the championships 12 out of the last 13 years. They have a total of 60 championships since 2002. IN the past years, however schools have caught up and one such school is a small liberal studies school in Clinton, Mississippi, called Mississippi College. Mississippi College is the only school to date to have ever beaten the College Table Tennis Giants. Coach and former Mississippi College player, Cheng Li states, “We will try our best.” Mississippi College is a 5,130 student school in Clinton, Mississippi and is America’s 2nd oldest Baptist College, 191 years old!

In 2015, Mississippi College was at their best beating Texas Wesleyan setting up an internal regional rivalry for years to come and this year is no different.  Look for Texas Wesleyan and Mississippi College to always be favorites, but there are a couple of dark horses looking to heat things up: University of Houston from the South Texas division for one and the University of Florida from the Northern Florida division could create a stir!

Men’s singles and women’s singles are going to feature some of the best College Table Tennis players. Texas Wesleyan alone features twelve singles players in the competition! Last year’s South Regional Champion and National Championship singles winner Yi Chi Zhang (Men’s Singles) is back looking to defend. Click here to see who is looking to make Zhang’s run for the Regional Title a bit more difficult! 

NCTTA South Regional kicks off at 2:00pm Central Time on Saturday and Sunday at 9:00am Central Time.

Pictured here is Team Captain and leader from UT Austin, Felix Chan who will be in action at Texas Wesleyan with his UT Austin team!