(by Steve Hopkins, photo USATT)
Huntsville is home to the largest space museum in the world, the US Space & Rocket Center. This week, the discussion in town wasn’t focused on Moon Rocks or the development of the rockets that put man on the moon – rather, the focus was on a thousand of America’s best table tennis players descending on Alabama to rock the Rocket City for the 2024 US National Table Tennis Championships. Huntsville’s Von Braun Center was a new venue for this event, with its location and size working well for this massive showcase for table tennis in the United States. This year, there were 115 events with a series of rating events, singles and doubles across age and rating levels, classic events in hardbat, para events, and the featured National Championship titles in Men’s and Women’s Singles, as well as Men’s and Women’s and Mixed Doubles (with the Hsing Family Foundation sponsoring the Men’s and Women’s Singles events as well as U-21 Men’s and U-21 Women’s events).
Unlike many other sports’ national championship events, this table tennis event brings both the best current elite players and many of the best players from past eras. Some of the names over the years have now been repeated so many times that it would be difficult to count the number of age division championship for some of our more seasoned players. Titles this year went to many familiar names: Patty Martinez-Wasserman won four events (and placed in 5 others), Derek May won five events, Pete May won another Men’s 80+ title (and won a Doubles title, and had a pair of second place finishes), USATT CEO Virginia Sung won three events (and added a second place finish), Jimmy Butler won three events (plus a second place finish), Yan Ge won five events (and placed in three others), and Jian Zhuang won four events (and added a second place finish). There were certainly many other great performances from our more seasoned players as well.
In the featured events, it was Kanak Jha taking his fifth National Singles title and Hong Lin winning her first (Hong Lin also won the Over 30 Women’s Singles event). Men’s Doubles went to Nandan Naresh and Daniel Tran and Women’s Doubles went to Amy Wang and Rachel Sung. Amy Wang doubled up in doubles titles with her win in Mixed, paired with Andrew Cao. Not to be outdone, Andrew Cao won three events (U2600, Mixed U17, and Mixed) and placed in two more doubles events – securing five medals for the week (so far, he is still active in at least one late-finishing event today). In Para Class 8-10, Tahl Leibovitz took the title – he also finished 3rd in Men’s Over 30 Singles, and Over 40 Men’s Doubles. Para 6-7 went to Ian Seidenfeld and Para 3-5 went to Jenson Van Emburgh – two additional titles going to some of America’s best Para team members. For full results, visit the tournament page at omnipong, or USATT’s event page. See Butterfly’s U.S. Nationals Photos.
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