By Michael Reff
NCTTA Media Committee

A special treat awaited NCTTA participants and the public on Thursday March 30 at 10pm in a Zoom call. For the first time in NCTTA history, live draws were made to determine who plays whom in the first rounds of the tourney throughout Women’s and Coed’s Teams matches. According to live draw host and Rating Committee Chair Kagin Lee, the decision to carry out the draw this way was to promote transparency.

“Besides the ceremonial aspect, performing a public draw is important to demonstrate the fairness of the draw,” Lee said. “This way there can be no question about why any given team is in one position rather than another; everyone witnessed how it happened, and it was done out in the open rather than secretly in a back room.”

There were specific criteria that the live draw followed, ranging in order of priority level from seeding placement to geographic location, with the goals of creating as much a randomized environment of choices as possible.

The criteria as well as the results of the draw can be found in the link below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/166PisAss-Ft27gO2Oon6X5wO00xBw0sq....

The live draw boasted an engaging crowd and Lee expertly explained the process and patiently answered questions. He noted, “one person even corrected me when [I] made an error.” This demonstrated further the transparency of the entire public approach to the draw.

Kagin observed that because the draws are finished already and out in the public, “teams can design their ordered rosters specifically for the opponents they expect to face”, saying it is another “strategic element” that was not found in the previous method.

Kudos to Kagin and the rest of the NCTTA crew for being more forward thinking and ushering in a new era of fairness and transparency!

About 2023 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, PongSpace, Major League Table Tennis.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday April 14th 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