By Willy Leparulo; guest writer
NCTTA Media Committee

No, it’s not the boy band but the college table tennis teams! Carnegie Mellon and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are the NCTTA’s “new kids on the block” for the 2022 Championships.

Both are coming to the NCTTA Championships for the first time in their programs’ history. Both schools worked hard and now will enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA was founded in 2015 by Jiaxuan Li and the team ultimately debuted in NCTTA in the 2019-2020 season, says Logan Herman, one of the club’s officers. The club is small but that allows for them to all wear different hats to make the team function better from general administration to fundraising and more.

Their biggest support comes from outside of school table tennis clubs like South Park and Pittsburgh Oakland. Herman says, “These clubs provide us with better places to play along with a variety of non-CMU opponents for our players to gain experience against.”
We asked him about his predictions for Nationals and Herman admitted that they may be outside of the group of “traditional” contenders but don’t count them out; they plan to do “some damage”. Heads up to the traditional NCTTA participants, CMU is in the house!

Another new school joining the Championship fun is the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. UNCC has been a club since one of NCTTA’s own, Marketing/Video guru, Andy Nguyen was in college 2013 ish. We chatted with UNCC’s Club President Hunter Hawkins, who has been playing since his freshman year and is in his last semester of college. Hawkins states, “We will outperform our seeding, as our players tend to play to their opponents’ level and get beter [sic] the more pressure is on them.” These new kids on the block aren’t going to be shy and this is what our sport is all about!

UNC Charlotte already displaced Duke University in the Carolina division as the champs and finished in the Top 3 in Regionals. This could be the making of a veritable underdog story!
Check out Carnegie Mellon and UNC Charlotte at the NCTTA Championships in Round Rock April 8-10th!

Pictured here is UNC Charlotte.

About 2022 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships

The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Round Rock CVB. Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams. The event is sponsored by Double Happiness, Double Fish and Joola.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday April 8th on champs.nctta.org

About NCTTA

The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes elite intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org