National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA)
Fremont, CA, April 10-11, 2004
By Tzu-Wei Lin

Easter bunny didn’t bring in chocolate eggs this year – instead, the creature brought in hundreds of Stiga 3-star balls to sunshine California where NCTTA held its annual grand slam event on the West coast for the first time. Participating schools increased to sixteen compared to last year’s eleven, showing the rapid growth and increasing level of competition NCTTA has brought to collegiate table tennis.

Among the ‘sweet sixteen,’ ten schools were entering the event for the first time. The winning machines from Texas Wesleyan University (TWU) would make their debut in NCTTA Championships as the no. 1 seed, followed by Californian power houses University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and City College of San Francisco (CCSF) as the no. 2 and no. 3 seed respectively. Defending champions University of Illinois were the no. 5 seed, and in the face of tough competition, they smile and enthusiastically said “We will try our best to defend our title!”

Day 1 of the competitions began with some interesting match-ups. Korean Junior Olympic Kim Bong Geun from University of Southern Mississippi (USM) was upset by University of Pennsylvania’s southpaw ace Casey Ching as UPenn went on and scored a narrow but precious victory over USM 3-2. But USM quickly stood back up and edged defending champs Illinois by a margin of 3-2 also. As the first few rounds were matchups between higher seeds versus lower seeds, favorites cruised to comfortable victory margins; TWU, whose players were sporting sleeveless shirts after cutting their uniforms, showed that they enjoyed their debut with 5-0 wins in its first three rounds.

Later that day, Citybeach Facility threw a banquet party for both ACUI and NCTTA participants. TWU Head Coach Christian Lillieroos hosted the night event by tweaking his accent and created a comical atmosphere as the ACUI hardware were handed out to this year’s champions.

Day 2 began with an intense duel between USM and TWU. With Kim of USM taking down TWU Singles 1 player Biba Golic in four sets, and Tiger Ramakrishnan grabbing the Singles 4 victory, USM became the only team in this tournament to force TWU into a deciding doubles match up. Despite their hardest effort, they fell short to scoring the biggest upset, when the pair of Kim and Tiger fell short to Biba and David Jiachen Wang from TWU in four games.

Round robins would culminate, leaving the elite eight in a single-elimination bracket. Interestingly, UCLA and CCSF were put together in the quarter-finals in a battle of California. The long battle would culminate in the doubles when the UCLA Bruins prevailed to win the match 3-2.
Advancing to the final four were TWU, UCLA, UPenn and Illinois. The defending champs were knocked out in the semis by UCLA, and further denied a trophy when UPenn avenged a round-robin loss in the battle for 3rd place. Ultimately, TWU ‘ran a truck’ over UCLA in the finals with a powerful 3-0 win, and a further statement of an impending TWU era in the NCTTA championships. Newgy Industries awarded a Newgy Robo-pong 2040 to the champion school.

Final Standings

1st Texas Wesleyan University (1)
2nd University of California, Los Angeles (2)
3rd University of Pennsylvania (8)
4th University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (5)

(Seedings in parentheses)