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APRIL 8, 2006
NCTTA CHAMPIONSHIPS UNDERWAY
FORT WORTH, TX: The 2006 Clear Channel National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships got underway on Saturday. The event, featuring teams and individuals from 49 collegiate institutions from across the nation, is being hosted by Texas Wesleyan University in the Sid Richardson Center.
Saturday’s early action featured Association College Union International (ACUI) singles preliminaries as well as the ACUI doubles competition.
Texas Wesleyan University took first and second in men’s doubles. The Rams’ second seeded tandem of Eric Owens and Courtney Roberts won the National Title by defeating their schoolmates Ludovic Gombos and Dinko Kranjac in the final. Gombos and Kranjac upset top seeded Princeton University’s team of Adam Hugh and Pan Lin in the semifinals. Facing a seemingly insurmountable deficit trailing 2-1 in the match and down 2-8 in game number four, they rallied to take the final two games with scores of 11-9 and 11-9. The title was the third men’s doubles National Championship for Owens and Roberts. The duo also won the title in 2003 and 2005.
In women’s doubles, the final was an intriguing match up between second seeded Jasna Reed and Sabrina Worrell of Texas Wesleyan, and top ranked Stanford’s Whitney Ping and Kyna Fong. The two teams knew each other well. Reed and Ping were doubles teammates in the 2004 Olympics. In addition Reed and Fong won the 2002 ACUI title. In this case, Reed got the better of her former teammates as Texas Wesleyan won the match 3-1 with scores of 11-8, 13-11, 7-11, 11-5. The title was the second women’s doubles National Championship for both Reed and Worrell.
In mixed doubles, top ranked Texas Wesleyan’s Owens and Reed will take on Imran Pariyani and Jackie Lee from the University of California Berkley in Sunday’s final, which is scheduled for a 4:30 p.m. Owens and Reed ran through the bracket without dropping a game. Pariyani and Lee defeated Walter Alomar and Melissa Feliciano from Puertorico in a tough second round match. UC-Berkley won that match 3-1 (9-11, 11-7, 11-5, 11-9).
In singles action, fourteen round robins were played on the men’s side and nine on the women’s side. The top two individuals in each round robin advance to Sunday’s single elimination championship bracket, and all others advance to the consolation bracket. Sunday’s singles competition is scheduled to begin at 12:00 p.m.
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association men’s and women’s team competition is currently underway. The opening round of competition began at 6:00 p.m. Team qualifying will continue on Sunday beginning at 9:00 a.m.
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