Penn State Wins Atlantic Division
An NCTTA Feature - February 2012

By Andy Kanengiser
NCTTA Media Relations Chair

We are … Penn State! That’s the rallying cry after the Nittany Lions table tennis team raced to victory in the NCTTA’s Atlantic Division tournament on the University Park campus.

“In teams competition, Penn State was the number one seed and they proved their dominance throughout and won comfortably,” said division director Asif ud-Doula. PSU standout Marcus Jackson led the way on February 4 and didn’t lose a game.

The University of Pennsylvania finished second during team competition in the White Building, a gym-like room that’s often used for dancing on the campus in Central Pennsylvania. Other teams competing that Saturday included St. Francis University, Penn State’s Scranton campus and Drexel University that all put their coed teams to the test. In addition, newcomer Bryn Mawr College had a women’s team that competed.

In singles, PSU’s Jackson was the winner with a victory over fellow PSU player Kevin Cheung in the final. In women’s competition, Shengzhi “Sandy” Sun of Pennsylvania easily won the round robin group. Newcomer Shengyun “Wendy” Huang put in a good showing to finish second. All told, 13 men and five women took part in singles competition.

The success of Penn State’s table tennis team comes on a campus still saddened by the death of Joe Paterno, a football coaching icon who served the Nittany Lions for more than six decades. The Brooklyn, N.Y. native lost his battle with cancer. Paterno was 85.

A PSU faculty member who loves table tennis, Asif is originally from Bangladesh, but grew up in Poland in Eastern Europe and also lived in Senegal in West Africa. The Atlantic Division director says Marcus Jackson and others on the Nittany Lions team will quickly be gearing up for the NCTTA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship at Virginia Tech at the end of February.

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