Harvard Ladies Pull “Double Duty” at NCTTA Championships
By Willy Leparulo
Press Committee Member
NCTTA holds a unique competition called the Coed Teams. It allows for men and women to play together to represent their school. Because of this format, college table tennis is very unique and at times leads to some “interesting” situations. One such situation is with this year’s Harvard University Coed team that features 3 out of 4 of its players being women. Usually men will outnumber the women, but this year we are flipping the table and Harvard women are leading the way!
Breaking barriers is none other than Harvard’s #1 Women’s and Coed Team player, former Hong Kong international, Kelly Yenn. Yenn says of this upcoming experience, “It feels incredibly exciting! As a first-year student, not just new to NCTTA but also to the entire table tennis community here in the US, I feel really grateful to have such a tight knit community with my fellow teammates.” Yenn remarks further on how a “novel experience” this is to play on both sides of the competition!
Her other women teammates are Marianne Wang, Stephanie Chen and MIT transfer, Jingting LIn. While Wang and Chen have similar comments, we pin our focus to Lin who played for long time rival MIT and now is in her final year of NCTTA competition in this very special scenario for Harvard University. Lin speaks so graciously about her contemporaries and the past women college table tennis players, “ It’s incredibly inspiring. I’ve always admired strong female players who have excelled in coed events at Nationals—players like Amy Wang and Rachel Sung from UCLA, Emily Lin from Cornell, Sabrina Zhu from Georgia Tech, Ivy Liao from UBC, and Zhen Deng and Jiachi Lin from Texas Wesleyan, amongst many others. This year, I’m honored to play alongside the top women’s players, Kelly Yenn, and I’m excited to have fun competing in the coed event as well!”
Check out Harvard’s coed and women’s team at the 2025 NCTTA Championships in Rockford April 4-6th!
(Pictured above is the Harvard table tennis team)
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About 2025 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams. Also this year a first in NCTTA’s history is the Collegiate National Team trials on Thursday April 3rd for the 2025 World University Games.
PongSpace, Peaka Pong, Stiga and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 4th on http://www.nctta.org/champs/2025/video.html
About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote 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 competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org