Ft. Worth, TX ∙ Apr. 1-3, 2005
By Thomas Lackaff
We find ourselves at the National Association of College Unions International (ACUI) and National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) championships, hosted in Ft. Worth, Texas by the number one team on the scene, Texas Wesleyan University (TWU). Down to brass tacks: in Friday’s ACUI competition, top seeds Eric Owens and UC Berkeley’s Jackie Lee won the ACUI singles titles for their respective genders (Jackie defeating former TWU team member Biba Golic, now at Illinois Institute of Technology). Eric also won the men’s doubles title with teammate Courtney Roberts, which will go nicely on the mantel next to the mixed doubles title he shares with Sabrina Worrell (another TWU co-conspirator). The aforementioned Jackie Lee and Vega Shah of USC’s Ping Pong Posse won the women’s doubles title (California love, what!); it may also be noted that the TWU fellows finished 1-2-3 in the men’s singles. Can you say “dominance”? I knew you could!
The NCTTA competition began on Saturday. This was the battle for team supremacy, where a deep bench is invited to prevail over the dominance of a single player. Still busy guest-umpiring, I was not in the best position to capture any salient drama in the early rounds. With apologies to all the players involved in all the killer matches that I did not have the luxury of observing with a notebook in hand, allow me to offer some highlights.
Significantly, this marked the debut of women’s team competition; Virginia Tech, under the tutelage of Sean O’Neill, took the crown. In the men’s competition, it is promising to note that half of the teams in the field are first-timers (Welcome!). UC San Diego found themselves invited via the first ever wild card spot, awarded to the highest-ranked team which did not win its division.
Some early drama unfolded on table one: after Florida’s Steffan Schebesta beat TWU’s Aldis Presley in five, TWU won the next two matches in a race to three. It is up to either TWU’s Sabrina Worrell to close it out, or Florida’s Bruce Zhang to force a deciding fifth match. Bruce comes out swinging and takes the first two games 11-8, 11-5, but she digs in and pulls out the third game 11-6, and the fourth a clutch 11-9. Soon it’s 5-5 in the fifth, 6-6, 7-7, until Bruce pulls away to win it 11-8, forcing a doubles tiebreaker. Florida’s Steffan Schebesta and Rui Yan manage to take TWU’s team of Aldis Presley and a fresh Eric Owens to deuce in the second, but that would be as close as they would get to a huge upset before TWU, perhaps a bit sobered by being forced to a tiebreaker, wins it 3-0.
In the next round, U Penn’s Shahab Joudaki trails Eric Owens 0-2 in games but deuces the third. At 11-all, Eric misses a backhand long, then does an encore to lose the first game and open the door just a crack for the would-be giant slayers. In game four, the crowd is divided between hometown boosters and the collective underdog that is all others; Eric indulges the former by going up 5-0, then the latter by losing three in a row, before finally pandering to the locals and closing it out 11-5. Dinko and Courtney do their jobs, leaving in Sabrina Worrel’s capable hands to close it out against Liying Hua, who puts up a good fight before losing 3-1. (I wonder if TWU gets that Foo Fighters’ lyric stuck in their heads after each match: “Done, done, on to the next one”?)
Californian contingents USC and UC Berkeley squared off in a match highlighted by USC’s Peter Straka winning 13-11 in the fifth over Cody Kang. This leads to a tiebreaker, with Berkeley’s Allison Seibel and newly-crowned ACUI women’s champion Jackie Lee squaring off against Simon Joen and Imran Pariyani. With Berkeley leading two games to nil and 9-8 in the third, USC is called for serving into the wrong side of the receivers’ court. This takes the wind out of USC’s sails and the Berkeley girls sew up a clutch 3-0 tiebreaking decision.
University of Southern Mississippi’s superstar Kim Bong Geun won game one from U Penn’s Casey Ching, who, tied 6-all in game two, served off twice in a row before rallying to win 11-9. Kim’s lightning footwork and lethal forehand regain control as he wins the next two 11-5, 11-8. With USM up two matches to one, it is up to U Penn’s Liying Hua to beat Makoto Kinomo and force a tiebreaker; Makoto, however, takes it in five, and the team with the best potential for upsetting the reigning champs is looking good.
USM’s Kim Bong Geun loses his first two games with UCSD’s Tom Plaisted, then recovers to win the next two. This is not to say that game five was tight, but it did feature such exciting scores as 3-3, 4-4, 6-6, 7-7, before Tom goes up 10-7, and holds on 11-8. This match-up between the first-ever wild card team (UCSD) and the tournament’s second-seeded team (USM) went down to the wire, with the former’s Kim Bong Geun and Tiger Ramakrishnan facing the latter’s Tom Plaisted and Derrick Poon, both of whom won their singles matches to force the tiebreaker. USM wins the first game 11-9 on a huge third-ball forehand smash by Kim, who, now enjoying the luxury of having a partner to hit every other shot, runs down every ball and commits his entire bodily momentum to every shot like a pips-out Kim Taek Soo. The result: USM wins the next two 11-6, 11-9, but UCSD makes a strong case for their deserving (and the general need for) a wild card spot.
The Marquee Match
So finally comes one of the marquee match-ups, between the two highest rated players here: national champion Eric Owens versus world team member Han Xiao of the University of Maryland. (Han hadn’t played in the ACUI Regionals, and so wasn’t eligible for ACUI singles or doubles here.) In game one, Han looks relaxed and confident, whereas Eric seems tense and makes many uncharacteristic unforced errors, giving Han the first game, 11-7. At 7-7 in the second, Eric wins a huge counterlooping rally, then gets his forehand dialed in to close it out 11-8. In game three, Eric’s forehand has gone from hot to thermonuclear, and he punks Han 11-2! Eric then leads 10-8 in the fourth, but a steely Han deuces it; they trade points until Eric goes up 12-11, match point, and than Han serves into the net! The home crowd’s cheers drowned out the collective groan of the underdog pep squad, U of M likely consoled themselves with the fact that Han is only a freshman, and life went on.
Final
So, as Las Vegas odds makers might have predicted, it came down to TWU and USM for the big trophy. I learned that teams have the option of rearranging their batting order, so I was disappointed but not shocked that I did not get to see Eric Owens play Kim Bong Geun. Eric wound up playing Tiger Ramakrishnan, who gets a respectable total of eight points in the first two games before they acknowledge the inevitable and entertain the crowd with exhibition-style play in the third game. At match point, Eric puts on a lobbing clinic, knocking over a barrier and retreating well outside the court, waiting for Tiger’s next smash, which he lobs just close enough to catch the edge of Tiger’s right line and seal the match 11-5.
Next, Kim gets the easy 3-0 win over Aldis Presley predicated by the deft shuffling of the lineup, winning the first game 11-1. TWU’s Courtney Roberts, perhaps avenging his teammate Aldis’ game one thrashing, starts by giving Makoto Kinomo an identical 11-1 drubbing. Curiously, the next game goes to deuce before Courtney prevails 14-12, and the third goes to a deja vu deuce before Courtney wins 12-10.
It is then up to TWU’s Dinko Kranjac and USM’s Shankaren Chandramouli to decide if it ends or extends. Shankaren, trailing 9-10 in the first, hits a backhand which catches the net and sails long. Undeterred, he prevails 11-6 in the second, and proves it was no fluke with a convincing 11-5 victory in the third. At this point, the (okay, I’ll admit it, we) underdog boosters began to think it may have been worth sacrificing our marquee match-up for the sake of strategic sequencing if it might yield the coveted upset. Dinko, however, is not inclined to go out like that, grittily pulling out the fourth game 12-10. On to game five: Dinko never trails, loop-killing winners to an 8-4 lead before Shankaren claws back to within one. Dinko topspins his way to triple-match-point 10-7, but it only takes him one heavy underspin serve for Shankaren to bury in it the net and end it. As anticlimactic as it was, it at least demonstrates that this was no foregone conclusion; who knows what next year will bring?
I arrived at this event by a series of flukes, but it was no fluke that it all went so smoothly: big ups to Willy, Christian, Andre, TWU, Clear Channel Communications, The Star-Telegram, TTP and Newgy for making it all happen. To borrow the words of NCTTA coach of the year Sean O’Neill, everyone present shared a “...great appreciation for Texas Wesleyan; they’ve really pulled out all of the stops and have to be commended for having a professional presentation and really making the athletes feel like they’re stars.” Which, as we all know, they are.
Final: Texas Wesleyan d. Southern Mississippi, 3-1; 3rd: Maryland d. UC-San Diego, 3-1; SF: Texas Wesleyan d. Maryland, 3-0; Southern Mississippi d. UC-San Diego, 3-2; QF: Texas Wesleyan d. USC, 3-0; Maryland d. Toronto, 3-1; UC-San Diego d. UC-Berkeley, 3-2; Southern Mississippi d. Penn., 3-1.
Final Standings: 1. Texas Wesleyan; 2. Southern Mississippi; 3. Maryland; 4. UC-San Diego; 5. Penn; 6. Toronto; 7. UC-Berkeley; 8. USC; 9. Florida; 10. Columbia; 11. Ohio State; 12. Boston; 13. Cornell; 14. Kansas State; 15-16: Virginia & Virginia Tech (tie); 17. Rutgers; 18. NC State19. Washington; 20. Northeastern.
1st Virginia Tech, 4-0; 2nd USC, 3-1; Mississippi State, 2-2; 4th Virginia, 1-3; 5th Johns Hopkins, 0-4.
Men’s Singles: 1st Eric Owens (Texas Wesleyan); 2nd Dinko Kranjac (Texas Wesleyan); 3rd Courtney Roberts (Texas Wesleyan); 4th Guo Hui Lu (East Los Angeles College)
Women’s Singles: 1st Jackie Lee (Calif.-Berkeley); 2nd Biba Golic (Illinois Tech); 3rd Marisol Delzo (St. Petersburg College); 4th Kathy Wang (Virginia).
Men’s Doubles: 1st Eric Owens/Courtney Roberts (Texas Wesleyan); 2nd Kim Bong Geun/Chandramouli Shankaren (Southern Mississippi).
Women’s Doubles: 1st Vega Shah/Jackie Lee (USC /Calif.-Berkeley); 2nd Kathy Wang/Wan-Yin Chang (Virginia/Virginia Tech).
Mixed Doubles: 1st Eric Owens/Sabrina Worrell (Texas Wesleyan); 2nd Jackie Lee/Guo Hui Lu (Calif.-Berkeley/ East Los Angeles College).
Men’s Consolation: 1st Francois Charvet (Ohio St.); 2nd Jacob Mathew (Ohio State).
Women’s Consolation: 1st Yoshiko Yamada (Spokane Falls CC); 2nd Jessica Samuels (USC).
| |
| USA Table Tennis - Serving the Table Tennis Community |
| |