The 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships will once again serve as more than just a competition; they also thrive as an interconnected community across North America.

This year, we have four top Canadian schools coming to Rockford in April. The University of Toronto, McGill University, McMaster University and Western are all represented at this event. However, Western in particular is coming off of an unprecedented first championship at CITTA (Canadian Intercollegiate Table Tennis Association) in March.

There is a deeper story, though, and one of a unified vision for the future of College Table Tennis. CITTA and NCTTA recently signed into a partnership agreement to help further College Table Tennis in North America. This agreement will be a step forward in strengthening our already strong bonds with our brothers and sisters across the border in Canada.

Canadian College Table Tennis has a rich history in the NCTTA from the early 1990’s, where Queens University was one of the first Canadian schools to join. Today, we get to continue that legacy!

We spoke to Western about their experience at the CITTA Championships, and they stated, “CITTA was a great experience for us. Western was super grateful to be invited. We were able to try out different pairings for both singles and doubles, which really helped us figure out our roster going into NCTTA Champs.”

At the center of that journey is something that really makes college table tennis so special: it is the "people behind the paddles".

Sisters, Nicole and Demi Cai lead the program both by their play and with their ‘can-do’ attitude. Nicole, who is also head coach of the program, says,
“(We are) super lucky that we both ended up choosing the same university. Growing up, we were often competing against each other, so it’s been a really nice change to now be playing on the same team. We’re really grateful to have that kind of support system within the team.”

The support system is exactly what the goal is within the walls of our sport in College. Demi comments further, “I feel very fortunate to have my sister by my side. Watching her play for Western growing up made me realize that this was where I wanted to be, both academically and as a table tennis player. She’s been my biggest supporter and my best friend, so it means a lot to be able to share this experience and play alongside her before she graduates.”

As these schools from across the USA and Canada come together in Rockford, the champs will highlight not just the awesome competition, but the powerful community that defines our sport.
College Table Tennis strength isn’t just in the matches played, but the connections formed along the way.

Pictured here are Demi and Nicole Cai of Western

About 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams and Collegiate Peakapong Singles.
PongSpace, PeakaPong, Major League Table Tennis, Nittaku and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.

Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 10th on https://www.nctta.org/champs/2026/video.html

About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote 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 competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org

By Chris Mar
NCTTA Peakapong Director

The 2026 NCTTA Nationals PeakaPong event marks the first true championship edition after a more casual 2025 debut. A new fall divisional qualifier system was introduced, with top finishers earning direct invitations to Nationals. While participation was initially limited, the matches were competitive and showed growth potential.

PeakaPong uses a unique hardbat style, creating a level playing field for both mid- and high-level players. Notable performances in the Florida qualifier included Livia Carvalho (2nd), whose playing style naturally fits the format, alongside Osvaldo Pelaez (1st) and Loi Park (3rd). The format emphasizes chopping rallies, similar to classic hardbat or sandpaper play.

The Nationals event was structured as a 32-player maximum tournament with round-robin groups feeding into a knockout bracket to ensure ample playtime under PeakaPong’s distinct rules (short games, no deuces, alternating serves). Due to low qualifier response, on-site registration was allowed.

Top contenders include Livia Carvalho and highly rated players like Sara Gulabani. Overall, the competition is expected to be open and adaptable. The winner will receive a custom championship blade, “Stein’s Blade,” named after Jack Steinberg and designed as a unique ZLC/ALC hardbat paddle.

About the 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams and Collegiate Peakapong Singles.
PongSpace, PeakaPong, Major League Table Tennis, Nittaku and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.

Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 10th on https://www.nctta.org/champs/2026/video.html

About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote 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 competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org

MLTT has agreed to support the 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships through an in-kind donation. The donation will help to support the logistics of the upcoming Collegiate Championships by providing critical resources to ensure smooth operations. This contribution will help enhance the NCTTA Championship experience for student-athletes, coaches, and fans alike.

Major League Table Tennis is the first professional table tennis league in the United States, launched in 2023. Several Collegiate Table Tennis players have gone on to compete in the MLTT including NCTTA 3 time Men’s singles Champion, Nikhil Kumar, to name one. Several current Collegiates are playing on an MLTT team as well, including Senura Silva, Jonathan McDonald (Tx Wesleyan) and Sid Naresh (California).

NCTTA welcomes MLTT’s partnership in helping promote the College Table Tennis mission!

About the 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams and Collegiate Peakapong Singles.
PongSpace, Peaka Pong, Major League Table Tennis, Nittaku and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.

Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 10th on https://www.nctta.org/champs/2026/video.html

About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote 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 competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org

The 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships covers North America with our student athletes coming from Canada, Puerto Rico and the United States. Here is a snapshot of the event:

248 Student-Athletes
22 Coaches
49 Colleges and Universities, including 4 from Canada and 1 from Puerto Rico
113 different majors
79% STEM majors
73% are undergraduate students
23 countries represented including the USA; China, India and Brazil being the most popular international areas

The competition itself is equally impressive:
80 Men’s Singles (full event)
40 Women’s Singles (full event)
24 Coed Teams (full event)
16 Women’s Teams (full event)
32 Men’s Doubles (full event)
16 Women’s Doubles (full event)
104 Volunteers (staff)

NCTTA is a true representation of how global our sport is: “Everyone, Everywhere.”

About the 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams and Collegiate Peakapong Singles.
PongSpace, Peaka Pong, Major League Table Tennis, Nittaku and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.

Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 10th on https://www.nctta.org/champs/2026/video.html

About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote 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 competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org

Hello NCTTA world, we would like to introduce you to Fiona Hu, currently the only Tulane University Table Tennis representative in the NCTTA postseason! Hu traveled 19 hours to her division in North Alabama (her school is in Louisiana) and did so by train! Talk about passion and commitment, and folks, that isn't even the amazing part. Let's dig in and get to know more about her story!

Ms. Hu was born and raised in a place called Denham Springs, Louisiana, and picked up her first paddle during a middle school P.E. class. She didn’t even realize that table tennis was a competitive sport, but at Tulane University as a freshman, she learned that Tulane even competed in the NCTTA Championships, and from there, she was determined to compete. She later joined the local New Orleans Table Tennis club and even had an opportunity to do a semester abroad in China. In China, she would meet what she calls her “Table Tennis mentor,” and from that point her love for the sport flourished into passion.

Look, we all know that table tennis in the USA is a niche sport at best and that is no different in Louisiana, but what Hu found was a global community of pongers that enjoy and love the sport equally as her. Taking a 20-hour train ride to North Alabama gave her perspective and, yes, a qualification to the NCTTA South Regionals in Texas, where this time she will be taking a plane ride for the next experience!

A shoutout to the folks she has met along her “Journey of Tenacity”: New Orleans Table Tennis Club, Tulane Table Tennis, Oxford (AL) TT club, Drew Ogden (Dixie Division Director), and even her opponents from Universities in Alabama, Pari Motivaras and Bhavya Paineni.

Good luck to Ms. Hu on her next adventure on the campus of Texas Wesleyan University for the NCTTA South Regionals!

Cal Poly SLO has been an NCTTA member school since 2015, and their highest finish to date has been 2nd in their division. As everyone in sport knows, the goal is to finish first, and sometimes 2nd place just doesn't cut it.

However, this year, Cal Poly SLO has a new freshman star named Victor Xie. Long-time player for the school team, Derrick Phan states, "I think with his addition and our team building and learning from past experiences of many 2nd place finishes within our division, we were able to finally get over the hump this year."

Victor Xie may not be your typical household name, but if you play table tennis, you would know him as one of the top juniors in the nation and now one of the top collegiate players!

Cal Poly SLO is now looking towards the Regional Championships, as, after besting UCLA in the SoCal Division tiebreaker to finish first, they will be heading to the West Regional Championships. Phan says, "There's definitely going to be plenty of tough competition at Regionals, but if we prepare well and compete to the best of our abilities, I think we'll be able to hang with the top teams, and I like our chances of making a strong run at Regionals!"

Congrats to the underdogs of Socal for showing the TT world what grit and determination are all about!

Pride, passion, and perseverance, words every athlete aspires to, and are what we bring to the proverbial table when we play our beloved sport in the United States. In just its second competitive season, the South Dakota School of Mines Table Tennis team has achieved something that once seemed like a dream: Rocky Mountain Division Champions and a direct qualification to the West Regional Championships!

Just 3 years ago, table tennis did not even exist at SD School of Mines. Antonio arrived in 2022 to study Mining Engineering and his brother Gian followed in 2023 to study Industrial Engineering. In 2024, they founded the table tennis club, building it from scratch. All of this while balancing demanding STEM degrees.

“This club became a family,” Gian said. “We push each other in sports and in academics. Discipline is everything.”

At the center of this historic run are brothers Antonio and Gian Assante, founders of the program, whose journey from Peru to Panama and eventually to Rapid City is a story of pride, passion and, yes, perseverance! They are Brothers in Arms and in competition too as Antonio and Gian would face each other in the Men's Singles Championships with Gian claiming 1st place and Antonio claiming 2nd place (both direct qualifiers to the West Regional Championships)

As a team it was a championship forged in adversity; juggernauts, University of Colorado, who had generally won the division had just beaten them in the 2nd division tournament and SD Mines Table Tennis thought all was lost.

“I felt like I had failed my team,” Antonio recalled. “We thought we had lost the division. We didn’t even know the tie-break procedures yet.”
But what followed was nothing short of remarkable. After all results were calculated under NCTTA rules, South Dakota Mines emerged as Rocky Mountain Division Champions: their first-ever team title and, more importantly, a trip to the NCTTA postseason!

Antonio and Gian want to push forward a new identity for SD Mines and this is just the start. For Antonio, this is also deeply personal as he is going into his final season as a collegiate table tennis player.

“I started as a scared kid with a paddle. Now I want to fight for that kid, to show him that even if you’re afraid, you still go for it.”

The NCTTA West Regional Championships is one of the most (if not the most) competitive regionals in NCTTA and the Assante brothers are no strangers to challenges. They also want to put everyone on notice that their school is no longer just known for engineering excellence, but also for its competitive table tennis.

South Dakota School of Mines: "That school that plays College Table Tennis"

Nearly 30 geographic NCTTA divisions take center stage as Collegiate teams battle it out for a coveted spot in the NCTTA postseason, but it isn’t only about Teams, as NCTTA singles gets going too!
Singles players—this is your moment!

Division tournaments will also feature Men’s and Women’s Singles events, where champions punch their ticket directly to NCTTA Regionals.
Ready to compete?

Register for NCTTA Singles at nctta.app—>click Registration —> Singles
Represent your school and earn a spot to the NCTTA postseason

(Featured here is 3 time NCTTA Men's Singles Champion and California Alum, Nikhil Kumar!)

Common questions for extraordinary people!

College Table Tennis teams fought all semester for placement, and now several of you have asked the question posed in the title!

We have the answer for you. Click here: https://nctta.org/content/standings to look up your 2025-2026 standings! Make sure to click on the drop-down box for the 2025-2026 season!

Why is this important?

The top schools in each division (following the Fall and Spring seasons) receive an automatic invitation to the postseason.

(Pictured here, Georgia Tech #1 from the Georgia Division)

Photo Credit: Derek Lee

Looking for a chance to make a real impact?

We're inviting passionate pongers to volunteer and join us in Illinois for an unforgettable experience! Whether you love table tennis or enjoy being part of table tennis events, your involvement will help bring NCTTA Nationals to life!

From photographers and scorekeepers to event support and operations, there's something for everyone.

Volunteer today and help us create a nationals to remember!

Click here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHdwycKXoLXeAbnkvpr43ilFoSdSLs...
to get involved!