The City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia) Welcomes Third Butterfly Thanksgiving Teams Event
by Barbara Wei

High profile table tennis returns to Philadelphia over Thanksgiving weekend after an 8 year hiatus. Philadelphia, famous for its cheesesteaks, universities and American history, played host to the 2008 USA Table Tennis Olympic Trials almost 8 years ago. This year, tournament director Dan Seemiller and tournament referee Mark Nordby are excited to bring almost 70 teams (200+ players) to the City of Brotherly Love for the third Butterfly Thanksgiving Teams event.

Elite teams representing high profile east coast clubs top the leaderboard with “LYTTC Professional” currently holding onto the top seeded position.  Led by Adam Hugh (many time US National Team member), Ruichao Chen (2015 Butterfly Aurora Cup and 2015 Butterfly Badger Open champion), and newcomer Kaden Xu, “LYTTC Professional” will be tough to beat. Second seeded “NJTTC 1”, winners of the 2015 Butterfly America’s Team Championship and led by Bochao Li (2015 Butterfly Arnold Challenge champion) look to upset the order and claim another team championship for their club. However, competition remains fierce as many strong teams will challenge the two top seeds for the title, including a Chinese international team (“Heilongjiang Mix”), top New York team (“NYISC Elite”) and runner’s up at the 2015 Butterfly America’s Championship (“XNT5”).

Competition begins at 10:00 a.m. Friday, November 27^th at the Legacy Youth Tennis and Education Center located just 6 miles from downtown Philadelphia. Teams will be divided into divisions and will then compete within their division for prizes. In divisions 2-8, the top two team finishers either earn prize money (division 2) or custom trophies/awards (division 3-8). In division 1, the winners will take home $3,000 in prize money, with prize money extending through 8^th place.

Continual coverage of the 2015 Butterfly Teams Tournament and stories about the athletes will be available at ButterflyOnline.com, or via Butterfly North America’s Twitter and Facebook pages.