NCTTA

This year's Men's/Coed Team title was against the famous University of California-Berkeley who ousted Mississippi College. Mississippi College had faced Texas Wesleyan for the past five years. This year Berkeley had high hopes and a good chance, but ran into the Texas Wesleyan machine which had all of its engines moving at rapid pace.

Texas Wesleyan showed its experience especially in the Women's team semi final where championship women's doubles duo Wang Chen and Yue Wu dug themselves out of trouble several times by beating out UC Berkeley! Coach Rather states about her doubles phenoms, "Berkeley almost had us in the final match of the team event, but Texas Wesleyan girls showed what really means to have team spirit and supporting each other through toughest time. Coach Doru's support in the match and girls never giving up allowed Texas Wesleyan to take another Women's National Team title."

NCTTA Media Chair

 

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire table tennis players worked hard as their school hosted the NCTTA championships games. Many helped behind the scenes as volunteers.

 

The 11,000-student school in the Chippewa Valley will enjoy benefits in return once the tourney ends Sunday. Double Fish, the China-based company and one of the tournament's biggest sponsors, is donating four new tables to UW-Eau Claire.

 

"This is a really big deal,'' says Jianjun Ji, the UW-Eau Claire team's coach. "It's a big encouragement to our club. The club will be more involved, and we will get new students.''

 

At the 2017 TMS college table tennis championships, scores of tables are all over at the McPhee Center as outstanding players from the USA and Canada battle for points.

 

Wisconsin-Eau Claire players competed against some of the best teams around, including the University of California-Berkeley. Eau Claire played their "A game'' but really couldn't compete against the stars from the West Coast.

 

"We are learning,'' said Ji, a sociology professor on the Eau Claire campus. "This was good practice.''

 

Getting four premier tables from one of the tournament's major sponsors will help the Eau Claire team in the future. The Eau Claire team really needs tables. Before the gift was made, Eau Claire's campus housed "four tables. Three are broken, including two that are seriously damaged,'' Ji said.

 

The school has already located a place in the McPhee Center to store the new tables from Double Fish. "These are high-quality tables of international standard,'' Ji said as he watched singles action from the Eau Claire stands Saturday afternoon. "We are overjoyed.''

 

The UW-Eau Claire president and other school leaders are delighted as well. When Ji arrived to teach sociology classes here 16 years ago, the Eau Claire campus had only one table. The Eau Claire table tennis club on campus began eight years ago.

 

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire hosted the NCTTA's 2015 championship games. The team's players also went all out two years ago to make all visitors feel welcome.

 

The 2017 TMS College Table Tennis Championships is hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Eau Claire CVB and is one of the premier table tennis tournaments in North America featuring 6 events: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.  The event is sponsored by TMS International, Gerflor, Double Fish

Players and spectators alike will enjoy a jam-packed weekend of table tennis at the TMS College Table Tennis Championships. The event starts Friday April 7th and continues through Sunday April 9th. 

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org

About USA Table Tennis

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, USATT is the national organizing body for table tennis in the United States, serving 9,000+ members and nearly 300 clubs. USATT sanctions 200+ events a year including the US Open and US Nationals. USATT is affiliated with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), as well as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). www.usatt.org

 

By Andy Kanengiser

NCTTA Media Chair

 

When standout players graduate, table tennis team coaches must recruit new talent and rebuild the roster in a hurry.

 

Such is the case with Northwestern coach Ned Leuchtner. Relaxing for a few minutes before the flurry of games Saturday in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he summed up the 2016-17 season.

 

"For Northwestern, it's a rebuilding year,'' Leuchtner says. 

 

In his 8th year coaching, there are positives to highlight for the university near Chicago. That includes the talented Northwestern women's team as players grabbed breakfast snacks in the Clarion hotel lobby.

 

There were notable triumphs for Northwestern in NCTTA tournaments earlier this year. "We beat Wisconsin and Purdue in the divisionals,'' Ned noted. "That's like the Chicago Bears beating the Green Bay Packers,'' in the NFL.

 

Wisconsin women, though, stormed back to topple Northwestern in the NCTTA regionals.

 

But the main thing, he said, is the Northwestern women worked hard to qualify for the NCTTA's biggest tournament of the year in Eau Claire. And recruiting for next season looks good. "We have a solid base to build on,'' Leuchtner says.

 

Based on the campus in Evanston, Illinois, the Northwestern team in purple uniforms features three players from China. They are: Jinyi Huang, 19, a sophomore economics and mathematics major from Hubei, and grad students Jing Li and Yining Zhu (both 23-year-olds are studying electrical engineering). Freshman Betty Yu, 18, a psychology major from Alpharetta, Georgia rounds out the women's squad.

 

Making recruiting go easier for Leuchtner is that Northwestern ranks as a world-class academic institution. "We're on the short list for people who want to go to a good college.''

 

Athletics is also huge at Northwestern, a Big Ten school that tackles big-time opponents in sports like football. Northwestern opens the 2017 football season at home against Nevada at Ryan Field on September 2. Duke is the road foe on September 9. Northwestern faces the Penn State Nittany Lions October 7 at Homecoming.

 

Getting an education at an elite school like Northwestern offers other advantages. The marathon of cultural attractions in the Chicago area are a huge selling point for college students.

 

Leuchtner calls table tennis coaching his fun, volunteer job. He works full-time for Comcast/NBC Universal Business as a market development account executive in the greater Chicago region. He knows a great deal about the cable TV industry.

 

But the Northwestern coach also knows a good bit about table tennis. Ned Leuchter paddled his way to become the Indiana University table tennis champion in 1984. That was two years after legendary coach Bobby Knight led the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team to a national championship triumph.

 

When the NCTTA championships wrap up in Wisconsin April 9, the Northwestern coach begins to look ahead to next season. There will be summer practices for players twice a week and tournaments roll around in the fall. Leuchtner will also step up plans to raise money for his team.

 

The coach reports success promoting Northwestern table tennis in the national media. Chicago-cased TV superstation WGN recently posted video clips of the Northwestern players, It's just another reason Ned believes his squad's future shines bright.

 

The 2017 TMS College Table Tennis Championships is hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Eau Claire CVB and is one of the premier table tennis tournaments in North America featuring 6 events: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.  The event is sponsored by TMS International, Gerflor, Double Fish

Players and spectators alike will enjoy a jam-packed weekend of table tennis at the TMS College Table Tennis Championships. The event starts Friday April 7th and continues through Sunday April 9th. 

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org

About USA Table Tennis

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, USATT is the national organizing body for table tennis in the United States, serving 9,000+ members and nearly 300 clubs. USATT sanctions 200+ events a year including the US Open and US Nationals. USATT is affiliated with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), as well as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). www.usatt.org

By Andy Kanengiser

NCTTA Media Chair

 

Plenty of players from Ivy League packed their paddles for the 2017 championship games in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

 

The Princeton Tigers, the Penn Quakers, the Big Red of Cornell, Brown players from Rhode Island, a Yalie, and others are in the house at the McPhee Center.

 

 And, of course, between games April 7-9, they are focused on their computers to keep up with rigorous academic studies.

 

For Princeton Tigers, practices happen twice a week at Dillon Gym on the historic campus in New Jersey. When they're not slamming hollow white balls, the seven men and women on the Ivy League team are hitting the books.

 

Princeton player Sam Bernstein, 20, of Los Angeles is a computer science major making his first trip to the NCTTA nationals in the Chippewa Valley.

 

Sam is joined by smart teammates like senior Shirley Fu, 21, of Vancouver, British Columbia wearing orange and black uniforms. The table tennis ace from Canada is studying operations research and financial engineering. That sounds and is pretty challenging.

 

Danny Gitelman, 25, of Brooklyn, New York, is enrolled in Princeton's graduate school. He's studying math at the school founded in 1746. He's not planning to make a career out of table tennis. "We all brought our computers.''

 

Ivy League rivalries are pretty intense in sports like football and basketball. Harvard-Yale clashes every year are historic on athletic fields. Table tennis, not so much.

 

It's a "different culture'' with table tennis, with school rivalries in the Northeast not nearly as intense, Bernstein says.

 

So the cheering noise levels from table tennis fans seldom gets higher when Princeton is battling Penn, Cornell, or Brown.

 

A civil engineering major at Cornell, senior Nick Coyle is just happy to be paddling with the nation's best at the college championships. Being away from the Ithaca, New York campus is a little less stressful for the Cornell players this weekend. They are on Spring Break at the moment.

 

"This has been a very fun experience,'' says Coyle, 22, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania resident who's now job hunting.

 

It's been a cool experience to watch and compete against table tennis stars from Texas Wesleyan, Mississippi College, Lindenwood, Ohlone, Duke, California, Michigan and other schools for the Ivy Leaguers.

 

Coyle, who graduates from Cornell in May, wants to eventually attend graduate school. He's still got one year left of NCTTA eligibility and could return to the championships down the road. He played at the NCTTA championships in Eau Claire two years ago and at Monroeville, Pennsylvania in 2014.

 

How did things go for the Cornell player.Nick fought hard but lost 11-9 in the fifth game of his match with UCLA standout David Zeng, An environmental science major at UCLA, Zeng, 20, is an environmental science major from Oakland, California.

 

The University of Pennsylvania brought a 5-member contingent from its Philadelphia campus. A grad student in public administration, Penn player Liwang Huang, 23, grabbed a yogurt for breakfast at the Clarion hotel lobby before catching the shuttle bus to the tournament venue Saturday morning. The native of China is making her first trip to the national championships. "We've been training very hard.''

 

Founded back in 1764 in Providence, Rhode Island, Brown sent a large delegation to the tourney, including a stellar women's team. They are led by senior Nancy Zhou, a chemical biology major from Dublin, California. Three Brown freshmen round out the squad. They are:  Zixi Zhu, a cognitive science major from Beijing, China, Renny Ma, a neuroscience major from Lenexa, Kansas and Ellen Jiang of Hinsdale, Illinois. A 19-year-old, Ellen is studying computer science.

 

With major sports teams in other conferences from the Big Ten to the PAC 12, the Big 12 and ACC, schools like Northwestern, Michigan, Duke, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California-Berkeley, Texas and UCLA are well-represented here. All of the table tennis teams brought outstanding student-athletes. About 260 players and coaches are putting in long hours at the NCTTA tournament ending Sunday. Wisconsin-Eau Claire serves as the host school.

 

The 2017 TMS College Table Tennis Championships is hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Eau Claire CVB and is one of the premier table tennis tournaments in North America featuring 6 events: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.  The event is sponsored by TMS International, Gerflor, Double Fish

Players and spectators alike will enjoy a jam-packed weekend of table tennis at the TMS College Table Tennis Championships. The event starts Friday April 7th and continues through Sunday April 9th. 

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org

About USA Table Tennis

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, USATT is the national organizing body for table tennis in the United States, serving 9,000+ members and nearly 300 clubs. USATT sanctions 200+ events a year including the US Open and US Nationals. USATT is affiliated with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), as well as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). www.usatt.org

 

By Andy Kanengiser

NCTTA Media Chair

 

Complaints about questionable table tennis serves never seem to go away at tournaments. Even with a couple of umpires around, complaints from players, coaches and fans persist.

 

But the NCTTA is taking new steps to address the issue. And it started Friday at the 2017 TMS national collegiate table tennis championships.

 

Call it the use of two extra sets of eyes and ears as the three-day tournament played out at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus. The extra officials are called services judges.

 

Umpires who volunteer at the tournament may be called upon to act as the two extra judges to monitor player serves.  Their chief task is to ensure that players serve balls legally throughout featured contests.

 

For many years, umpires stayed seated in a position that's not good for deciding whether a player's serve is legal or not. Table tennis matches utilize two umpires. But no doubt, they can't see everything as players slam hollow white balls back and forth.

 

So why not add a couple of service judges to the mix? What can it hurt when championship matches are at stake?

 

NCTTA President Willy Leparulo applauds the use of new service judges to oversee key games throughout the tournament. Two additional officials will be stationed at the ends of the court. Their job is to notify the umpire if they detect a faulty or illegal serve.

 

The NCTTA experiment at the April 7-9 tournament in Wisconsin will get thoroughly checked out. And if the test case is successful, service judges would be added to the USATT National Championships later this year. And then it would be forwarded to the ITTF for potential approval at international tournaments.

 

Towards the end of the first day of busy competition at the McPhee Center on the Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus, Leparulo said the extra judges detected a few illegal serves.

 

With 250 college players coming from schools across the USA & Canada, it would be impossible to use service judges at every single match at the Wisconsin tournament.

 

Arcot Naresh, the NCTTA's Upper Midwest Division director, serves as a volunteer umpire at the games in the Cheese State.

Mark Wei, an umpire at the NCTTA's biggest tournament of the year, agrees. "This is a great idea,'' says Wei, who doubles as the NCTTA's Northern California Division director.

 

Wei has been involved at table tennis tournaments with disputes arising over serves. And sometimes the umpires on hand are unsure what's the right call.

 

NCTTA competition manager Kagin Lee says the change is something he's wanted for many years. He believes there will be a few tweaks made along the way.

 

But Lee remains hopeful the additional service judges will "result in clearer and more consistent enforcement of the rules, which should lead to fairer competition.''

 

By comparsion, major NCAA Division I college basketball tournaments use referees on the court and instant TV replays to help refs make the best calls. The list of sports constantly making rules changes, from football to baseball, goes on.

 

In table tennis, service must start with the ball resting freely on the open palm of the server's free stationary hand. And it goes from there. But too often service balls are hidden or other rules violations occur. And when umpires cannot see illegal serves, it can change a game's final outcome.

 

The 2017 TMS College Table Tennis Championships is hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Eau Claire CVB and is one of the premier table tennis tournaments in North America featuring 6 events: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.  The event is sponsored by TMS International, Gerflor, Double Fish

Players and spectators alike will enjoy a jam-packed weekend of table tennis at the TMS College Table Tennis Championships. The event starts Friday April 7th and continues through Sunday April 9th. 

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org

About USA Table Tennis

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, USATT is the national organizing body for table tennis in the United States, serving 9,000+ members and nearly 300 clubs. USATT sanctions 200+ events a year including the US Open and US Nationals. USATT is affiliated with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), as well as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). www.usatt.org

NCTTA Media Chair

 

California's Ohlone College stunned the USA's table tennis community with its strong third-place finish at the 2016 national championships.

 

Year two for the 8,000-student community college in the Silicon Valley shows the team from the West Coast is no fluke.

 

Yong Gao, the Ohlone computer science instructor and team's coach, has fans buzzing again at the 2017 national championships in Wisconsin. Their green colors stand out at the games in Eau Claire. So does their play.

 

Supporters of other schools are taking notice as Ohlone plays on. One of his stars, Ying Wang, 22, an economics major from Jilin, China, could transfer to a school like California-Berkeley or Stanford next season. She's that good.

 

Yi Wu, 20, another awesome player from Beijing, could return to join her family's business in China when she's finished playing in the USA. "I miss my home,'' the freshman says.

While Ohlone's top female duo lost its match Friday to Texas Wesleyan University standouts, it's always tough to beat the perennial national champs from Fort Worth.

 

No matter what happens in Eau Claire, Ohlone should see several new faces join the team next season. Recruiting really never stops for Coach Gao at the two-year school in Fremont.

 

The school near San Jose surprised fans at the 2016 NCTTA championships in Round Rock, Texas. The nice showing generated a good bit of positive press for the institution founded in 1965. So much so that school administrators may allow the squad to exit their practice space at the college cafeteria next year.

 

"School administrators know how good we are. We hope to move into the gym next year,'' the coach said during a break Friday at the NCTTA tournament.

 

As the 2017 season draws to a close in the Cheese State, Yong Gao is impressed with the quality of opponents his school is facing from across the USA and Canada. "The skill level is much better than last year. We face a lot of challenges.''

 

The season goes on a bit longer for Ohlone's ten players after the 2017 NCTTA championships end April 9. Ohlone will host a tournament on the Fremont campus April 29. It's a chance for California fans to see some amazing table tennis matches.

 

The 2017 TMS College Table Tennis Championships is hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Eau Claire CVB and is one of the premier table tennis tournaments in North America featuring 6 events: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.  The event is sponsored by TMS International, Gerflor, Double Fish

Players and spectators alike will enjoy a jam-packed weekend of table tennis at the TMS College Table Tennis Championships. The event starts Friday April 7th and continues through Sunday April 9th. 

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org

About USA Table Tennis

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, USATT is the national organizing body for table tennis in the United States, serving 9,000+ members and nearly 300 clubs. USATT sanctions 200+ events a year including the US Open and US Nationals. USATT is affiliated with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), as well as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). www.usatt.org

 

By Andy Kanengiser