2017 Virginia State Table Tennis Championships

Posted by: admin | on June 5, 2017

2017 Virginia State table tennis championships

Youngers rule the roost. Spicy Chipotle is USATT approved.

The 2017 Virginia State Table Tennis Championships wrapped up on Sunday 4^th June after 2 days of fierce competition with youngsters giving their older counterparts a tough time.

In the Men’s competition at the semi-final stage Louis Levene landed virtually all of his shots without any unforced errors to overcome his father by a margin of 4 games to 1. Despite Rajul putting forth a strong effort Allen Lin was too strong, serving, flipping and power looping his way into the final. The Men’s final would be a repeat of pool play where Allen defeated Louis by a margin of 3-games-to-1. With exciting away from the table rallies Allen showed better consistency to take the first 2 games. For the next 2 games Louis was able to land many extraordinary huge shots to level the match at 2-2. In games 5 and 6 Louis’s consistency faltered under increasing pressure from Allen’s non-stop ferocious attacks. No doubt these were powered by a spicy Chipotle lunch. The youngest tournament referee in the country Tyler Hess, declared lunch to be fully USATT legal and Allen ran out a 4-2 winner to retain his title as Virginia State Men’s Champion.

In the 3-4 playoff, Michael’s hit his stride and form, looping from both wings with extreme spin and consistency. Rajul put up a good fight but was unable to contain Michael’s shots and trailed from the start of each game through to the end. Michael secured bronze & now has the dubious honor of finishing 3rd at the State Men’s Championships for the 3rd year running in 3 straight games.

In the Women’s event 3 talented youngers, Jie Lu, Michelle Kang, Nicole Deng and a more experienced Jeeranan (Lana) Sangsinchai reached the semi-final stage. Jie with a powerful short pimples time pressure game was too fast for Lana winning comfortably 3-0. Similarly Nicole overcame Michelle without dropping a game. Onto the final and Jie was too strong for Nicole despite some good rallies, hitting numerous winners to rattle off 3 straight games and become the 2017 Virginia State Women’s champion. Experience outplayed youth in the 3-4 playoff with Lana winning 3-0 against Michelle for the Bronze. Ladies you are allowed to extend matches by a game-or-two for crowd entertainment and go to 4 or 5 games!

Probably the best match of the tournament was in open doubles where father and son Louis and Michael took on Allen and Jie. Despite entertaining rallies the first 2 games were owned by Allen and Jie. Father and son stepped up their attack landing multiple winners to level at 2-2 and then went on fire in game 5 barely missing to take a 3-2 lead. Allen and Jie responded with big winners to level the match at 3-3. Trading shots and points and the match boiled down to 9-9 in 7th game, at which point Allen took his chance and flipped killed 2 points to take the open doubles crown. Flip-to-victory outdid spin-to-win on this occasion. Jie aged 14 lifted a total of 3 titles. Juniors Under 18, Open Doubles and Women’s Doubles. She is going to be a force to recon with for many years to come.

Roll of honor

Our 2017 State Champions for Open and Aged events are Allen Lin, Jie Lu, Michael Levene, Henry Wung and John Olsen

2017 Rated Events State Champions are Rajul Kansara, Amol Kothari, Mahmoud Youssef, Nikhil Arora and the second chance Under 1000 winner was Mitchell Zhou.