Joel Lidstrom, Press Committee Member

The NCTTA Championships are a great spectacle each year: teams and their athletes marching together; their camaraderie a joy to see; their excitement palpable.

But there was another team this year, one that did not compete, one that no one had heard of, whose skills have been honed by dint of hard work, as if they, too, aspire to be top seeds.
The Innocent Men, an all-male acapella group, performed both the Canadian and American National Anthems to commemorate the opening of our NCTTA championship. To say that they received thunderous applause is an understatement.
Said tenor Conner Moll, member of the group and a music theater major at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, “We do National Anthems for sporting events pretty often, but were surprised and flattered at the response, especially at such a major event!”

Conner was joined by Mitch Pettijohn, Andrew Kroll, Sam Kroll, Duncan Reyburn, Isaac Geffers, Eric Augustine, Brett Dutkowski, and Soren Johnson, all students at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. They rehearsed for several hours on the Canadian anthem (which they had never sung), and equally long on a new arrangement of the American anthem.
Singing a capella is an enormous challenge. Multiple parts move independently (not unlike table tennis doubles!), typically with complex harmonies…all without the support of an instrument to reinforce the pitch.
Kudos to The Innocent Men for their musicianship and generous contribution to this great event!

(Featured in photo are members of The Innocent Men. 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