Last year was a year to remember for the University of Toronto Table Tennis Team. Both the co-ed (mens) and womens performed superbly, achieving our best results ever since joining the NCTTA. This year, with the loss of some of our best players to UofT academic pressure/stress and graduation, but gaining the return of a couple former veteran players, we have almost an entirely different team filling into our last years’ success.

Though having traversed down a much more turbulent path than our past year, the UofT team did manage to achieve recognition in its right this year, despite the adversity.

Divisionals:
Fall – The fall divisionals proved to be a very competitive tournament, with Toronto, Waterloo and Western tied for first in the Co-ed team standings and our women team coming in 2nd after a surprisingly strong showing from Western.
Winter – The winter divisionals was an unfortunate tournament for the UofT team as a number of our team members were sidelined due to the cold, flu and other illnesses. Our co-ed team only won one match, coming in 2nd overall with both divisional results combined and the women team (barely a team with only 3 players, 1 short of a full team) failed to win a single match, placing also 2nd with both tournmanent results combined. The bright side of the winter divisionals came from our singles showing, with Ran Zhao and Roxana Pao winning the men and women singles tournament respectively, as well as Xixi Guo coming in 3rd in the womens singles.

Regionals:
Our regional tournament this year was also a different scenario from last year, featuring the return of an ever dominant U Ottawa and former powerhouse Cornell; but missing from the picture included Ohio and Michigan’s top teams Ohio State and U Michigan respectively. The mens singles lacked authority, with none of the region’s top 5 male players participating, but was made up by a cutthroat womens singles tournament. At the end of this tournament, our co-ed team placed a decent 2nd, behind Ottawa, but edged ahead of Western, to avenge our divisonal loss, and Cornell; our women team came in at a respectable 4th (again with only 3 players); Ran Zhao placed 4th in the mens singles; Roxana Pao and Xixi Guo repeating their divisional results, coming in 1st and 3rd respectively again.

Congratulations to Ran, Roxana and Xixi for their amazing finish in the singles tournaments and a giant thank you to both our co-ed and women teams for an amazing result and role-model tenacity.

Championships:
Although all our teams and singles participants once again qualified for the National Championships in April, it is still undecided whether we will participate as it will be taking place right in the middle of UofT’s final exams. Regardless of whether UofT has a presence at this tournament, we would like thank all the team members for another great season and a wonderful display of our UofT and table tennis spirit.