A Pack of Lone Wolves

By Brayden Glad
NCTTA Media Committee

Ten players who did not participate in the team events at Nationals have made it to the championship singles men’s bracket, while six such players have made it to the women’s singles bracket. In the opening round, a couple of matches were between such players, including Mingyu Zu of Boston College versus Trinity Sung of Cal Poly in the Women’s bracket.

Luke Zheng of Boston University took on Max Gu of Univ. of Central Florida and Theo Stevens of Oklahoma challenged Lingkun Kong of Rice in the Men’s bracket. Mingyu Zu, Lingkun Kong and Max Gu advanced.

After two rounds, the only member of the “lone wolves” still standing in the round of 16 of the Men’s bracket was Takato Tsuchiya of Cal State Northridge. There were five women who met that criterion in the round of 16, however: Jie Lu of Virginia, Rachel Zhou of Illinois, Xin Li of Ohlone College, Yanyu Xie of Georgia Tech and Mingyu Zu of Boston College are all in the bracket.

Takato Tsuchiya was defeated in the round of 16 by Jack Wang of Northwestern, eliminating the last non-represented school player from the men’s bracket. Of the four women in the round of 16, only Xin Li managed to win, defeating Yanyu Xie, Then Li followed that up with another win against Kelly Zhao of Texas to reach the semifinals. However, Li’s run would end there with a straight-sets loss to #2 Zhen Deng of Texas Wesleyan. All of the finalists in both events would be those we saw playing in the high level team events yesterday.

Photo of Max Gu. Photo Credit to Grant Bergmann

About 2022 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships

The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Round Rock CVB. Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams. The event is sponsored by Double Happiness, Double Fish and Joola.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday April 8th on champs.nctta.org

About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes elite intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org