This weekend at the Triangle Table Tennis Center  in Morrisville, North Carolina the NCTTA 2017 Mid Atlantic Regionals will take place.  The NCTTA Mid-Atlantic Region includes schools and college table tennis athletes from the geographic area including the Carolinas, DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania. Around 50 student athletes will be participating in this event for titles in men’s and women’s singles and men’s/coed and women’s Team titles. Top winners getting to qualify to the coveted NCTTA Championships! It will be live streamed too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZaI8U2QUwo

College Table Tennis National Championship qualification is on the line with the top three men’s/coed teams qualify; top 2 women teams along with the top 8 men singles and top 4 women’s singles. The TMS 2017 National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships is NCTTA’s premier event.

The Mid-Atlantic Region features a new school in the mix, Pillar College (from the Pennsylvania Division) from New Jersey though qualified as a wildcard team by dominated the competition in the spring semester. They brought in some new blood, including Lily Yip as a coach/player and US Olympian Tim Wang and New Zealand standout, Matt Heathington.  One may ask why is a New Jersey school playing in the Pennsylvania division?  Vice President of NCTTA, Joe Wells states about the wildcard team, “We didn’t have enough schools to create a New Jersey division so we moved all of our New Jersey schools to nearby Pennsylvania and it worked out well this year.”

Pillar College players may be the rookies of the tournament, but veteran schools like Duke will be quick to add that they want a chance to shine in the light as well. Duke is coming in with one of the strongest lineups featuring its own New Zealand international in Roger Rao like Pillar College’s Matt Heathington. The Blue Devils also have a homegrown talent in Charlie Berman hailing from the North Carolina area and are ready to rumble!

Men’s and Women’s singles should be interesting. Lily Yip the player coach from Pillar College looks to have the title on paper as does Kaden Xu in Men’s singles. You can never predict sport though. Check out the Regionals on our live stream or for more information go here.

Pictured here are athletes from Temple University and University of Pennsylvania which will also be in attendance!