butterflyonline.com 

2003 NORTH AMERICAN TABLE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS

Balboa Park Activity Center, San Diego, California, USA, April 4-6, 2003

North American Championships: Day Two

USA's Whitney Ping rips a backhand loop. Photo by Sungill Kim ©2003.

Saturday, April 5

By Kathy Chin

USA's Jackie Lee. Photo by Sungill Kim ©2003.

Table Tennis fans saw lots of excellent competition during Day Two of the North American Championships in San Diego.

No team could get any more than 7 points against the dynamic duo of Adam Hugh and John Leach in the Cadet Boy’s doubles.

Canada's Bence Csaba. Photo by Sungill Kim ©2003.

Judy Hugh and Laura Xiao had a much tougher time of it. Down two games to zero in the final against Canada’s Betty Tam and Shirley Yan, the Americans came alive in the 3rd game. Canada had match point in the 4th, but Hugh and Xiao fought back to win that game and the last to win the title, -8,-5,8,10,5.

Canada’s number 5 woman, Wennin Chiu, and Sara Yuen, won Junior Girls' doubles, beating fellow Canadians Anna Ngan and Stephanie Yuen 3-0 in the final, 8,8,2.

After beating USA's Jackie Lee and Whitney Ping in the Women’s doubles semi’s, Canada’s top-rated woman in this tournament, Petra Cada and Marie-Christine Roussy, met and beat USA's Tawny Banh and Lily Yip 3-1 in the final, 5,-9,6,3.

USA Junior Stars Han Xiao and Mark Hazinski. Photos by Sungill Kim ©2003.

Some excellent qualifying-round matches including a 5-game humdinger between John Leach and Misha Kazantsev…it went 18-16 in the 5th, with Leach pulling off the upset, -12,8,-6,13,16!

Another deuce-in-the-5th match took place between De Tran and Canada’s Guo Peng in the Men's Singles preliminaries. Tran went up 7-3 in the 5th, but Peng didn’t panic, he made some adjustments, kept focused, and came back to win 13-11. Tran refused to use the excuse that he’d had to sit in an airplane for 7 hours on a Chicago runway!

Play continues tomorrow with fans anxiously awaiting a look at Canada’s premiere player Johnny Huang. You can bet those camcorders will be rolling!!!

USA Junior Boys' Team: 
Coach Dan Seemiller, Mark Hazinski, 
Han Xiao, Misha Kazentsev. 
Photo by Sungill Kim ©2003.

(Click on photo for larger version.)

USA Junior Girls' Team: 
Sophia Dan Dan Yi, Katherine Wu, 
Whitney Ping, Jackie Lee, 
Coach Doru Gheorghe. 
Photo by Sungill Kim ©2003.

(Click on photo for larger version.)

Back to North American Championships Home Page

 

ORGANIZATION

MEMBERSHIP

CLUBS

PLAYER CATEGORIES

USA Table Tennis - Serving the Table Tennis Community

TOURNAMENTS

RULES

AFFILIATES

FEATURES