Interview with Todd Sweeris on his Collegiate Table Tennis Career

By Larry Hodges

Todd Sweeris went to University of Maryland from 1993-1998. He was rated 2455 at the time, #17 in the U.S. and #9 in Olympic Eligible rankings. He showed you can mix table tennis training by making the 1996 USA Olympic Team. He did it again in 2000, this time while working as a CPA.

Age/date of birth:
Age 32, born 5/28/1973 

Best titles or rankings:

• 2-time Olympian (1996 and 2000)

• 1999 Pan Am Team Gold Medal

• 1997 U.S. Collegiate Men’s Singles Champion

• 1993-1995 U.S. Collegiate Team Champion

• 3-time U.S. Doubles Champion

• 2-time U.S. Open Teams Champion

• U.S. Olympic Festival Gold Medalist

• U.S. Team member 1993, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000

• 1990 U.S. Junior National Champion

Academic degree(s) or achievements:
Bachelors Degree in Accounting, will earn Masters of Tax degree in Summer 2006.

Occupation:
CPA, specializing in corporate and partnership taxation.

During that time, who were your practice partners?
My main practice partners were Sean Lonergan, Xu Huazhang, Gao Jun, Dave Sakai, Sean O’Neill and Rocky Wang.

What was your training schedule like?
I normally would practice one to two times a day for about 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on my class schedule.  I also did some sort of physical training about four times a week.

What was the hardest thing about trying to combine training and academics?
I would say the most difficult thing is that each and every day you are busy with practice or studying and there is not much free time to just hang out.  I think the other thing that is difficult for someone like me is that you can’t procrastinate because you just don’t have that luxury. 

Is it possible to go to college full time, train seriously for table tennis, and (to use the colloquial phrase), “have a life”?
It is certainly possible to have most of all three, but not all of all three.  If one of the three had to be sacrificed, it was time spent hanging out with friends.  I think the thing I didn’t do nearly as much as my friends was to spend countless hours hanging out playing video games or watching TV and movies.

Any thoughts on the future of college table tennis?
I certainly think that college table tennis has grown since I was competing, but I’m not quite sure if it is where we need it to be yet.   I think it would be great  if college table tennis titles became important to achieve because we have so many people who are attending school and are in the top 16-20 in the country. 

What advice do you have for student/athletes in table tennis?
I would say that if you have a dream or goal in both school and table tennis, work hard in each, and work every day towards accomplishing both.  One thing I decided was that I didn’t need to graduate in four years and could take less than a full load, depending on the year.  For example, I took off a semester to train for the 1996 Olympic Trials.