Junior Spotlight: Anne Deng

Photo by Gerry Chua


Anne Deng, born on Thanksgiving in 1994, is the oldest child in her family. She is currently ranked fourth in girls under 14 in the USA. With a rating of 2039, she is a member of 2008 USA Cadet Team.
Anne began to play table tennis at age seven, at Houston Huaxia Chinese School. She played one to two hours per week during the first several years. She slowly got interested in the sport and became a more serious player after she joined the Houston Table Tennis Club (HTTA) where she is a regular player, playing no less than 16 hours each week.
Although she played for a few years, her level remained at 1700 for quite some time until her father changed her playing style from loop only to hit and loop with pips out on the forehand (like Jiawei Li of Singapore). The change was a real blessing to her. Anne hated looping because she could never get it right, and therefore she wasn’t sad at all to give it up. Later, changing her rubber and style, along with a summer trip to China where she worked with coach Guohong Liu, raised her skill to yet another level.
The people Anne thanks the most are her parents and brother, who have supported her from the beginning and continue to do so. Anne says she appreciates them a lot, because they tell her to never give up. Anne also appreciates all her fellow members in HTTA as well as some of the people who coached or helped her, including Victor and Roxanne Subonj, Sam Wang, Yawei Li, Randall Medcalf, Lei Ye and Dazhi Wang.
Anne has a fixed training partner in her brother Charles Deng, who is almost as good as she is. She is currently working to fix some of her movements and hopes that she can play well in the North American Team Trials. Anne wants to keep playing to improve her skill, and he long-term goal is to go as far as she can with the sport.
Anne is an excellent student in school and, in her spare time when she is not playing ping-pong, she likes reading books, playing the flute, and even though it sounds unusual, she likes feeding turtles sausages in the lake.