New Jersey Table Tennis Club wins first place
WESTFIELD - New Jersey Table Tennis Club (NJTTC) won first place in two divisions and one runner-up place at the 2018 JOOLA North American Teams Tournament from Nov. 23 to 25 at the Gaylord National Resort in Washington, DC.
The tournament is one the largest table tennis team tournaments in North America. There were 260 teams from around the world participating in this tournament. The venue had 256 tables, and the total number of attendees was 1,800 people including players, coaches, referees, organizing members and spectators.
In the three days of tough games, all team players and coaches of New Jersey Table Tennis Club (NJTTC) were competing with great spirit and fighting hard for winning. NJTTC teams won two team champions and one team runner-up prize, and once again brought back honor and achievement for New Jersey table tennis community.
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The winning teams were: NJTTC team 4, consisting of players Ark Ouyang, Chiupong Huang, Kaiyang Zhu, Guanyun Liang who took 1st place in Division 8; NJTTC team 7, consisting of players Henry Siegel, Edward Xing, Shiv Kulkarni, and Evelyn Yuan took 1st place in Division 16; NJTTC team 1, consisting of Runner-up of Division 2, team player are Henry Zhong, Wesley Fan, John Mcdermott, Santiago Acosta
NJTTC head coach Jack Gao said, "At this large tournament, players and coaches from many countries in the world competed with each other, every team was fighting hard in three full days and all games were intense competitions."
In each division, teams were at the same level and hence were playing very close games, quite often teams had to play the ninth game to get their final winnings.
Head coach Jack Gao gave special thanks to NJTTC’s two sponsors, Forest Shipping International and ITOMTE, for their generous sponsorship and great support to table tennis sport and NJTTC.
Gao said, "NJTTC will keep up the good work of professional coaching and training many more young players to help them reach their great potentials at table tennis."
NJTTC has been in existence for more than 90 years and is the oldest club in the country. It is one of the largest table tennis clubs in the New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania region and is one of the few full-time table tennis facilities in the country.
A former professional player of the China Sichuan Province team, Gao has coached for many national and regional teams all around the world for over two decades, including China, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Kuwait and Taiwan.
NJTTC will be participating in the USA Table Tennis US National Championships in Las Vegas in July and in the North American Table Tennis Teams Tournament in Washington in November.
NJTTC is located at 226 N. Ave. W., Westfield. Gao can be reached at 732-822-3431.