National Collegiate Table Tennis Association

Sept-Oct 2004

National Collegiate Table Tennis Association Report

By Jack Wu, NCTTA Vice President

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is pleased to announce the end of our successful 2003-04 season while welcoming new members to join us in the upcoming new season.  This past season actually started very early, when the executives voted for the 2004 championship site.  The various bids were discussed openly on the NCTTA forum (the discussion threads can still be viewed in the forum’s archive) with City Beach/Stanford winning the bid.  Over the next several months, NCTTA focused on obtaining its 501(c)(3) non-profit status and struck an exclusive equipment sponsorship deal with Stiga/Table Tennis Pioneers.  As a result, NCTTA was in a much better position in terms of finance and marketing even before the season began!

Meets in all divisions started promptly in fall of 2003.  However, there were some controversies within the New England and Ohio divisions.  Questions were raised regarding whether certain players were students or, in fact, faculty members.  These concerns were addressed and solutions were reached in a timely manner by the executive board.  Here, NCTTA would like to reiterate its commitment to prompt table tennis on the college campus and welcome all affiliated school members to participate in NCTTA meets on the second or third teams.  However, NCTTA reserves the first team positions for students since it will influence how certain club programs can transform into university-recognized varsity sports programs in the future. 

Early in the fall, our recruitment director, Willy Leparulo, was also appointed as the new national director for Association of College Unions International’s (ACUI) table tennis program, after Hank McCollum had stepped down from that post following many years of dedication.  The appointment strengthened the ties between ACUI and NCTTA, and also opened the doors for many NCTTA executives helping to run several ACUI regional competitions. 

As for NCTTA competitions, spring of 2004 brought many intense, heated battles as teams juggled for position and for an invitation to the NCTTA Championship.  The most intense division race took place in the New England division where Boston University and Wesleyan University (a small liberal-arts college) defeated the traditional powerhouses in the region, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and Harvard University.  Of note, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the University of Virginia also qualified for the NCTTA championships together.  The reason is that Virginia had in fact turned into a college table tennis hotbed where our new rule allows two schools to represent a division with 8 or more member schools!  By contrast, in divisions with 7 or fewer teams, only the winners are invited to participate in the NCTTA Championship.

On a positive note, the new divisions in Southern California and the Dixie region (Alabama and Mississippi) were an immense success, producing several high quality matches and sending representatives to the championship.  However, the fledging Ontario division and Northwest division did not have enough resources to hold its regional tournaments.  Lastly, both the Upstate New York (partly due to Ontario schools breaking off to form their own division) and Texas divisions did not finish their meets until late in the regular season, adding more stress to the championship planning committee.  We hope to avert these problems in the future, consolidate our current divisions and continue expanding into new regions.

In April, the NCTTA championship was held in conjunction with ACUI, where sixteen out of seventeen teams attended.  After two days of competition, Texas Wesleyan University defeated the University of California at Los Angeles to take its first ever NCTTA National Championship title!  The University of Pennsylvania finished in the third place.  At this point, NCTTA would like to thank many people for their help, including Sean O’Neill, Dennis Davis, Larry Hodges, USATT and many others.  NCTTA is also extremely grateful to its sponsors: Stiga/Table Tennis Pioneers and Newgy.  For all questions, please address it to Willy Leparulo at recruitment@nctta.org.