Photo of UNT's Joshua Mak. Photo credit to NCTTA

By Shaquila Sarapao, Guest Writer
NCTTA Media

The “Lone Rangers” made quite an appearance at the 2023 NCTTA Championships in Round Rock.

Joshua Mak, a Dallas-Forth Worth native, is the sole representative from the University of North Texas at Denton in Men’s Singles to be competing at Nationals.

Throughout his three years of college, this is his first time stepping foot onto the Round Rock Sport Complex stadium. “I’ve seen videos of Champs on Youtube, and [now] I’m really excited to play,” Mak says. “My goals for this tournament is to be able to play on the main table and to reach the round of 16 for Men’s Singles.”

Mak is seeded #15, having had a bye in the first round. It was a nostalgic first match against Ashwin Sankuratri (California), a teammate of Mak in California-based 888 table tennis club. For his second matchup in the round of 16s, it was an upset against #7 seed Tianming Xie (Harvard), a player also originating from the DFW area and who Mak had played as a child.

Mak’s first time at Nationals will be one to remember, but there are other great memories that this sport has brought him. “Playing Divisionals and Regionals with my team has been my most memorable experience leading up to Nationals,” he states, “UNT is a very ‘loud and proud’ team, and I plan on bringing our energy to Nationals as well.” And Mak brought that energy to the quarterfinals.

Mak’s quarterfinal match was against Nathan Xu (#4) from Pennsylvania. Being down 2-0, Mak kept fighting to bring the match to 2-1. However, it was an unfortunate end to the “Lone Ranger” after falling to Xu in the 4th set.

Viren Patel (#28) was another “Lone Ranger” from a school in Texas (TAMU in Corpus Christi) that brought the fight to the table. After emerging top in his preliminary round robin group, he defeated Robert He of UC Santa Barbara and ultimately lost in the Round of 32 to NYU’s Jeremy Hazin (#3) in a closely contested match that went the full distance.

Congrats to the “Lone Rangers” for making a strong showing!

About 2023 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, PongSpace, Major League Table Tennis.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday April 14th 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