Florida State’s legendary football coach Bobby Bowden retired after his Gator Bowl triumph over the West Virginia Mountaineers.

Saying farewell to the beloved 80-year-old coach, who finished a modest 7-6 in his final season, was a huge story for the Seminole Nation in recent months. Bowden’s out and Jimbo Fisher is in as coach of an FSU team that’s enjoyed much success, including two national championships, under Bowden. The Alabama native ranks No. 2 in football victories in NCAA Division I circles behind Penn State’s Joe Paterno.

They didn’t make a big media splash like Bowden’s retirement, but the Florida State Table Tennis Team is making lots of noise around the Sunshine State and across the USA.

During the fall and winter, there’s good reason for table tennis fans to get fired up on the Tallahassee campus. After all, the eight-member FSU coed squad recently catapulted to a ranking of No. 6 in the nation in the midseason rankings. FSU landed a notch below No. 5 Virginia Tech, a perennial table tennis powerhouse. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, one of three schools that hands out scholarships to top players, came in at No. 8.

The new rankings really shook up the collegiate table tennis world because FSU’s last trip to a top 25 national ranking was back in 2006. Back then FSU was ranked No. 23. FSU has never been listed in the elite company of the Top Ten – until now.

The eight-member FSU team truly spans the globe. There are outstanding players from Panama, Mexico, China and Hong Kong. FSU’s top player, Olmo Zavala, is a former Mexican National player.

Helping the renaissance of table tennis for the Seminoles, FSU imported a coach from China. Yi Zhang commands respect as the FSU coach and will serve in that capacity for a year. FSU faculty advisor, Dr. Dmitry Ryvkin states it best, “She (Coach Yi) has helped streamline our practice sessions and commitment on the part of our team members and other club members that we have not seen before.” Ryvkin goes on to suggest that maybe FSU may attract students now to the school for its table tennis talents among other factors.

Fans of the Seminoles credit superb players like Zavala and the new coach for making a big difference for FSU in the midseason rankings. Zavala says about the Table Tennis program at FSU, “It is a good program with a lot of players and it is growing very fast, but it is still important to understand that, like any other sport, it is necessary to practice in order to improve. We are very fortunate to have the support of FSU Campus recreation and Leach Center to have supported the arrival of Coach Yi. Let’s hope that Coach Yi can be at FSU for a long time.”

FSU’s Campus Recreation Office was able to offer an invitation to Yi Zhang to spend twelve months in Tallahassee to coach the team. Once the new coach got her feet on Florida soil, it soon became a big factor in FSU’s rise in the national rankings, said John Blihar, the university’s associate director of campus recreation.

“I understand that Yi’s coaching has inspired and energized the club to perform at a high level to the point where they are ranked No. 6 in the country,” Blihar said. “Kudos to the club and Yi.”

It wasn’t too many years ago (in the late 1990s) that the FSU club began with one lonely table in a corner of a gym to play the game. The FSU club has racked up a tremendous growth spurt for more than a decade.

Today, the FSU club is home to ten tables and 60 players. It is one of the premier club sports on the 30,000-student campus in Florida’s bustling capital city.

During the fall regional tournament, FSU played (and lost) some competitive matches with regional rival Puerto Rico. FSU’s standing as No. 6 is quite an accomplishment considering that Puerto Rico is one of the few schools that offer full scholarships to table tennis stars. The others are Texas Wesleyan (the No. 1 team in the land since 2002) and Lindenwood University in Missouri that ranks third, or one below No. 2 Princeton, the Ivy League.

The FSU team is practicing hard as they gear up for the spring regionals in a few weeks in Orlando. FSU’s new coach likes the No. 6 rating, but the school isn’t letting that be a distraction. A strong performance in the regionals is what she and the players are shooting for. Yi goes on to say, “While we are happy for our current number 6 ranking we want very much to shoot for the Top 3.”

FSU’s Table Tennis Team will never get the the blitz of ESPN coverage as is the case with Seminoles football, basketball or baseball. But the school is making Noles fans notice there’s another bunch of high achievers who play this Olympic sport with passion.