Shaquila Sarapao, Press Committee Member

People have heard of Adam Bobrow, World Table Tennis, and Pongfinity—influential Youtubers and table tennis enthusiasts. But have you heard of PandaPong?

PandaPong, who goes by the name Brian Zhao, plays for the University of Texas Dallas team. Last year, however, he was on the sidelines as their coach. A University of Texas Austin alumni and a current MBA student, he has been practicing with UTD since the fall with a couple years of eligibility left. He returns to the collegiate scene, starting Nationals by playing men’s doubles with Oliver Wang, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering.

Their first match against UCLA’s Daniel Zhou and Yuan Xu was a sound win, beating them 3-0. Zhao says, “It was my first match back, and it was good to pass through the first round. I think last year in doubles, they lost in the first round, so this year we already performed better, so that’s something to be excited about.”

The UTD team has had a number of memorable players coming in and out throughout the years. Zhao being a coach-turned-player, the opposite could be said to Tai Zhang. Graduating from UTD last year and now in medical school, Zhang played for the team and has now come back to coach his former teammates.

Another soon-to-be-graduate shares his sentiment to his team. Wang notes, “Since this is my last year playing and because this is my third year being on the team, I would have one more year to play NCTTA. But I’m happy to be able to have, hopefully, a good last run with UT Dallas.”

In their next match, Zhao and Wang fell to the number one seeds and eventual champions, Sharon and Gal Alguetti, brothers from Indiana University, 1-3. However, they’ll still continue on to playing in Coed Teams and Men’s Singles.

(Photo of UT Dallas' Brian Zhao. Photo credit to Dennis Yanga).

About 2024 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Visit Eau Claire CVB. The event will feature: Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams.
PongSpace, Joola, the US Coast Guard, Visit Eau Claire and Bluestone Designs sponsor the event.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 12th on http://www.nctta.org/champs/2024/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