The 2019 Northeast Regionals was held on Mar 9th-10th at Westchester Table Tennis Center.  Both NYU coed and women’s team got 1st places in the tournament, and are going to the 2019 iSET National championships as direct qualifiers, seeded #1 and #6 respectively.

Both NYU teams were also champions in the previous NYC Downtown Divisionals.

For the National singles, 11 (record high) men are qualified :  Tom, Adar, Stephen, Kevin, Ryan, Zhengxiao, Ryan, Kevin, Michael, Yang Liu and Robert, as well as 4 women: Joanna, Huichao, Judy, Mian Wu.  Among them Tom is the #1 seed and Adar the #5 for the men’s singles, and they also make the #1 pair in the men’s doubles.

The NYU women’s team fought their way out of a big round robin of five schools including Brown, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Brooklyn College and MIT.  For NYU the match against Brown was the most crucial one, as whoever won would be most likely to be the champion in the region.  Huichao, playing No.1, upset Jiarou Quan, Brown’s No.1 in a very tense 3-2 match. Despite Joanna lost in the second match, Hannah (Lihui) and Judy (Yu Ting) both beat their opponents decisively in 3-0, leading NYU to the final victory.

The coed team was seeded into the semi-final.  With a strong lineup including Adar, Tom, Wenhao and Stephen, the NYU team beat Brandeis 4-0 in the semi and Brown 4-0 in the final, took back the Regional champion they lost to Northeastern last year.

As usual singles were schedule on the second day.  The highlights were the women’s final between Joanna and Jiaruo and the men’s final between Adar and Tom.

At the round robin stage Joanna was in the same group with another two of her teammates, Huichao and Judy.  Three NYU players ended up top 3 in the group, but dramatically Huichao beat Judy, Judy beat Joanna and Joanna beat Huichao all 3-2 and with a lot of deuces.  Joanna advanced as the 2nd place, only after score differences in individual games were carefully calculated, in which she was merely 5 points behind Huichao.

Joanna entered into the final after her semi-final opponent withdrew, while Jiaruo revenged on Huichao 3-0 in the other semi.  Losing 1-2 in the first 3 sets with 9-11, 11-7, 9-11, Joanna showed her determination with a 11-4 in the 4th set, bringing it to a 2-2 tie.  In the final set, both sides fought hard for every point, and Joanna won lastly in the roar of her teammates. 

The men’s final was between Adar and Tom, another encounter between the top 2 players of NYU since the Divisional final not so long ago.  Adar took the first game 11-3 quickly, and it seemed likely for him to beat his teammate as he did three weeks ago.  But Tom adjusted  and counterattacked with two 11-5’s.  Even though Adar won the next game 11-8, Tom sealed the victory with another 11-5.

 

See more at https://nyunews.com/uta/nyu-up-and-comers-2019/yijun-tom-feng-soft-spoken-olympian-champion-model

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/november/we-don-t-have-football–so-what–we-have-the-table-tennis-male-a.html