College Midseason Report

By Tzu-Wei Lin, NCTTA Public Relations Director and Willy Leparulo, NCTTA President & ACUI Table Tennis Director

Every year, new schools come into the NCTTA and ruin the balance of power across the league, making the Nationals picture hard to guess. Although some National regulars like Texas Wesleyan, Florida, and Illinois are still sitting comfortably on their division thrones, ripples are being made all over the nation.

USA National Team member Han Xiao (2564) trampled his way into the college scene as a freshmen at University of Maryland, with his team sitting on top of the Mid-Atlantic Division above last year’s National third place team U. Penn. Although Princeton University lost to Maryland, they were the only team to threaten Maryland, with Princeton #1 Pan Lin suffering a tough loss at the hands of Han Xiao through a long five-setter (6, -11, -12, 13, 11) and Princeton’s # 4 player Michael Hsu claiming the sole win over a Maryland player, (6, 10, 8) over Michael Terao. Barring any weird incidents, look for these three teams to fight out the two spots for the Nationals. One might wonder how Adam Hugh will play a role when he goes to college.

What’s more interesting for this league is that, not only is the table tennis crazy Maryland state heating up competition, areas known for college basketball has sprouted new table tennis competition. In the newly formed Kansas division, University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL) looks to become its inaugural division champion. UNL boasts strong players like Yee Shern Chan and Hai Feng Zhang (rated 1889 and 1685 in NCTTA rating). Similarly, in Ohio State University and University of North Carolina at Charlotte, their table tennis teams also look to claim divisional championships under the shadows of college basketball. It will be interesting to see how these two divisions develop in future years.

The most dramatic and heated competition this year is located in New York City, with a three-way tie for one single ticket to the NCTTA National Championships. Last year’s champion Columbia University finds itself struggling with Rutgers and Polytechnic, with each of the three teams having a 1-1 record between each other. Whoever goes to the Nationals in the end will probably have a strong doubles team ready, as doubles is the final tiebreaker should teams go 2-2 in their match-up.

These and other division results are located on our website, www.nctta.org, and all division winners will be looking forward to the 2005 NCTTA College Championships sponsored by Table Tennis Pioneers and Newgy at Texas Wesleyan University in Ft. Worth Texas, on April 1-3, 2005. The championships will feature the first ever all Women’s Intercollegiate Team Table Tennis event as well as the 2005 ACUI Collegiate Table Tennis Championships sponsored by Newgy.

This year 2005 ACUI Regional qualifications are taking place in February in schools recreation centers and unions all over the country. Last year’s Men’s and Women’s singles champions reigned from Texas Wesleyan University so we will see this year if others will look to knock them off early in Regional Competition!