NCTTA welcomes Butterfly as the official sponsor of NCTTA's Coaching Certification Trainings. Butterfly produces high performance table tennis equipment of high quality in order to satisfy the requirements of all players.
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🏓 NCTTA National Fundraiser Part Deux
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By Willy Leparulo
NCTTA Media Committee
NCTTA will be continuing its efforts at $100k and every donation is matched dollar for dollar! Help NCTTA raise the rest of the $100k ($59k specifically)! We have already raised $17k so far!
Funds for this National Fundraiser will be used for several areas. This month’s newsletter we will focus on one that we all find near and dear to our hearts, the NCTTA Championships!
This past year we were able to invite over 100 volunteers to help manage our Championships and a large percentage were NCTTA ALUMNI.
Looking for ways to stay involved? Give back or just have a fun weekend then the NCTTA Championships is for you!
One NCTTA alum tells us about the Championships “I had a great time in my college years in California and now working in the Midwest I still get to be a part of NCTTA after my playing days!”
Click here to help NCTTA!
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Interview with Tae Kim--Join NCTTA Tech Committee📣
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By: Erica Tran
NCTTA Media Committee
Many of you all are unfamiliar with NCTTA’s Tech Committee. I spoke with Tae Kim to learn more about the team and their roles in the organization!
Q: What does the tech committee do?
A: The tech committee handles most of the technology used by nctta. We have historically been pretty low-tech in the past and had a lot of home brewed solutions hacked together to make processes work. Dan Wang created a system on his server “danserver” that did a lot of the database operations for us like keeping records of schools, players, matches, etc. But then there were processes like school registration which were a combination of multiple, totally isolated systems. For example, the previous system for registration would consist of an input form hosted on danserver. The form would lead the user to a PayPal link to complete a payment but the information of a completed payment could not be captured by the form. The incomplete form data would then be sent out in email to one of our inboxes and not saved in our database which meant that any issues with email sends would result in a loss of registration data. The emails were then scrubbed by a bot and transferred to a Google sheet. In this example alone, we had 4 independent systems working with very little communication with each other, which meant issues were unfortunately abundant.
Q: What projects have you all done?
A: In addition to “danserver” above, last summer, I started and launched the NCTTA app. The goal was to use modern tools and software engineering to address all of the vulnerabilities. Initially, the project began as a way to make a more cohesive registration system to make it easier on the lives of the end users, our treasurer, and our league directors. However, it quickly expanded into becoming the updated way to do many more of the NCTTA processes such as team roster submission, playoffs registration, and more, with still lots of exciting new features planned in our roadmap.
Q: What type of individuals does the committee consist of / recruit?
A: Our team mostly consists of CS majors who are now working professionally in the tech industry. Most of us are back-end software engineers, but we also have full-stack engineers, DevOps, and a Database Admin to support the team.
Q: Is the tech committee looking for new members?
A: The way I market our team to others when recruiting interns and alumni is basically on the notion that we are a giant sandbox where they can come build cool things – whether it’s to gain some experience in different tech/area, boost their resume, or simply to give back to the community. Feel free to contact vp.internal@nctta.org if you are interested in joining!
Pictured above, Tae Kim, NCTTA Volunteer of the Year with NCTTA President, Willy Leparulo at the NCTTA Championships Banquet.
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🍕🏓 Conference Provides Promise for Champs ✈️
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By Michael Reff
NCTTA Media Committee
The recent 2022 NCTTA Champs in Round Rock, TX was quite a success, however, have you ever wondered about the behind-the-scenes work it takes to plan for such an event? Well, first, it starts with choosing a venue that is big enough and has all the necessary technical requirements.
Each year there are conferences held where multiple possible venues advertise their sites to potential sports that want to host an elite event such as the NCTTA Champs. One such conference was in Puerto Rico just last month.
NCTTA President Willy Leparulo and NCTTA Marketing Chair Andy Nguyen made the trek to the Caribbean island and were pleasantly surprised at how many potential locations there were in which to discuss potentially hosting the Champs.
According to Nguyen,
“The conference went actually better than expected. Going in, we had learned that there was a decent downsize to the amount of venues we would be meeting and thus were a bit bummed out know our chances of finding a venue for 2024 would be slimmer. However after the second day of meetings, we came across a handful of possible choices, especially from venues that we haven’t been to before. Such venues included Wichita, Memphis, and Rochester, MN. While talks have just started we are hopeful in the venues that we have been able to get in contact with."
With the 2023 champs already set for a record fourth time at Round Rock, the future is looking bright for the year following with all the networking carried out by Willy and Andy in Puerto Rico. Be sure to continue reading the newsletter and tracking updates where future venues will host our amazing NCTTA champs, a one-of-a-kind college table tennis event!
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NCTTA Membership Fee Increases |
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We wanted to get this information out sooner than later.
NCTTA team fees are going up to 300 dollars from 250 starting for the Fall 2022 semester and on. Still, NCTTA provides the cheapest fees for Team competition where the going rate in Table Tennis in the United States is 600-800 dollars per tournament.
NCTTA Registration for the Fall 2022-Spring 2023 season will open up in September after Labor Day.
Look for more information then!
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BOD Election Results Yield Two Incumbents and a New Winner 🏓
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By Michael Reff
NCTTA Media Committee
The BOD elections were held during the first two weeks of June. There were three positions available, each with 4- year terms. According to NCTTA Webmaster Dan Wang, two of the positions had only the incumbent running uncontested for another term: Treasurer Randy Kendle and Vice President, External Affairs Joseph Wells.
The third position of Athlete Representative had two entirely new candidates running for the spot: Jenna Kiyasu and James Wang.
Ultimately, Kiyasu beat out Wang, thus adding an additional hat to her already busy NCTTA schedule. Kiyasu is also the director of the successful NCTTA Internship Committee and was an NCTTA intern herself that ultimately led to her securing a full-time job in her field.
Kudos to all recently elected BOD members, and here’s to another four years of keeping NCTTA #loudnproud!
(Pictured above is the current NCTTA Board of Directors at the recent 2022 NCTTA Championships).
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Interview with LA Ping Pong |
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By Erica Tran
NCTTA Media Committee
LA Ping Pong is a non-profit organization made up of table tennis clubs in the Los Angeles area. It was started by Bruce Liu, David Del Vecchio, and Adam Bobrow in the fall of 2009 with the goal of boosting table tennis participation and competitive table tennis opportunities in Southern California. The first season of the LA Ping Pong team league was held in the spring of 2010. At first, it was a purely adults league, but after several years, they incorporated a youth division. This 2022 season, it was purely youths, with teams from local middle and high schools.
I spoke with Alex Figueroa, one of the members of the current leadership board, along with David Del Vecchio and Jack McCarthy, to learn more about the organization. He shared that the school league has been great success and a lot of fun for youths – they play home and away games and get to enjoy the sport in a team atmosphere. LA Ping Pong is hoping to get more schools so that they can have both a middle and high school division. They also currently have a partnership with Grace Lin Table Tennis Club (GLTTC), which primarily coaches students from San Gabriel Academy who are interested in improving their game. The organization is interested in forming more partnerships as such.
Of note, LA Ping Pong organized a strong team of high school youths to compete at the 2022 ISF Gymnasiade, the largest international multi-sport event for 16-18 years old school students. See here for a writeup of the players’ amazing performance. The organization is also sending a team of 2 boys, 2 girls, and 1 coach to the International Children’s Games in England this summer.
Currently, LA Ping Pong has a website (linked above), FB and Instagram pages, and youtube channel where they post league matches. They are interested in recruiting 1-2 volunteers who can help with social media.
Photo credit to David Del Vecchio
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NCTTA's Best of the Best! |
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By Erica Tran
NCTTA Media Committee
Two months after the 2022 NCTTA National Championships, 7 winners have been nominated for “Best of the Best” in various categories! Here are the categories, winners, and quotes from a few of them:
- 2022 Female Athlete – Angela Guan – So grateful for the opportunity NCTTA gave me to compete in collegiate table tennis! Despite getting up for a 6am flight, playing 17 matches in 3 days, and getting injured, shoutout to CalTTC and everyone who supported me at the 2022 NCTTA Nationals!
- 2022 Rookie Athlete – Lavanya Maruthapandian – Super grateful to have been nominated Rookie Athlete of the year! My first year competing within NCTTA has been truly memorable and very nostalgic. Huge shoutout to my amazing CalTTC teammates and the wonderful NCTTA volunteers that make everything possible!
- 2022 Rookie Team – UNC Charlotte
- 2022 Regional Director – James Wang – I am totally surprised to be nominated as Regional Direector of the year since this is my first year in the position. I hope to continue to keep up the high level of Divisional and Regional tournaments and be one of the best regions out there (#westcoastbestcoast). It makes me happy to see players from all different schools compete in NCTTA so looking forward to see old and new faces this coming season. Lastly, Go Ags!
- 2022 Divisional Director – John Potochnik
- 2022 Coach – Danny Yip – I want to thank NCTTA for the coach of the year award. Prior to graduating from my alma mater many years ago, our club was slowly becoming less active and shrinking in size. The practices, friendly scrimmages, social gatherings, and promoting fighting spirit/crowd support for our school during the NCTTA meets; all of this were what made my collegiate table tennis experience fun and enjoyable when I joined in freshman year, so I want our current and prospective students to experience these aspects as well. I hope to see more people help grow their collegiate clubs in the future.
- 2022 Male Athlete – Sharon Alguetti
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