Nearly four million people live on the "Island of Enchantment,'' and they bask in a climate in Puerto Rico that's almost perfect year-round. Temperatures hover around 83 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and average around 85 degrees in the summer, while trade winds cool coastal towns. Both Spanish and English are the official languages. The beaches are great. With those nice features, the University of Puerto Rico is an appealing place to be, and, for table tennis players, its drawing power is terrific. 

The 30,000-student University of Puerto Rico a.k.a the Universidad de Puerto Rico offers full scholarships plus other aid to its top table tennis players. That covers such things as dorms, meals, funds for racquets, rubbers, three paid trips to NCTTA tournaments in the United States, and sports clothing. Plus, there is a paid master’s degree for athletes that want to pursue such degrees in graduate school, says Joel Alvarado, one of the university's team leaders. The players on the current team come from Trinidad, Tobago and the rest are from Puerto Rico. "We also try to recruit from the Dominican Republic, South America and Europe.''

At the University of Puerto Rico, costs are low compared to schools around the United States. And media coverage of table tennis is quite extensive with key matches often shown on TV on the 100 mile long by 35-mile wide island that brings together Hispanic and Anglo cultures.

The University of Puerto Rico isn't a newcomer to the game of table tennis. The school began offering scholarship help to table tennis players 27 years ago, he said. Table tennis leagues involving Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have been around for decades.

Texas Wesleyan, the NCTTA champs every year since 2004, and Lindenwood University in Missouri also offer major scholarships to outstanding table tennis players. So it's not a big surprise that many of the globe's leading table tennis players will flock to these schools. As a result, all three institutions rate very highly when it comes to the national rankings and are extremely competitive at both the regional and national level. All three teams finished in the top five at the 2009 College Table Tennis Championships.

The University of Puerto Rico combines great weather with quality academic programs and rock bottom costs. "For instance, our average semester of 15 credits/hours would cost $800 in total with fees and everything,'' Alvarado says. That's the cost for a state resident. For those not from Puerto Rico, the cost would be $1,600 per semester.

The balmy place where Spaniards arrived in 1493, Puerto Rico is teeming with fortresses and churches and lighthouses in small towns. Course it’s also home to big cities like San Juan with more than a million in the metro area. Puerto Rico has been a part of the United States since 1898 and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. 

When the Puerto Rico team made the trip from warm San Juan to chilly Rochester, Minnesota for the 2009 NCTTA Nationals in April, they wore their corduroy winter coats. On April 4, 2009, the team from Puerto Rico got front-page coverage in the sports section of the "Post-Bulletin,'' the local paper in Rochester, home of the famed Mayo Clinic. There were snow flurries hitting the Rochester area during the three-day tournament. Keeping tabs on players like Santiago Coste and Khaleel Asgarali, the newspaper said the athletic scholarships helped Puerto Rico become a table tennis powerhouse. The school also has other popular sports on campus such as basketball, baseball and volleyball. 

"Oh yes, we love our sports in Puerto Rico,'' Coste told the Minnesota newspaper. He's studying to be a doctor at the school. Coste is definitely passionate about the game. So are players at scores of other NCTTA schools, from California to New York and on up to Canada

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