 "Photo: Timothy Petropoulos")
While the Bearcat teams make and break records in basketball, softball, tennis, swimming, volleyball and track, another team has quietly been working its way up the ranks to become a valuable sports competitor — in table tennis.
Baruch’s table tennis team was established in fall 2008 by seniors Gary Ng and Andrew Yeun as a table tennis club. After gathering together some enthusiasts they decided to participate in the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association competition. Ng remembers that the team’s first attempt at the competition was not so successful.
“We were the least prepared group. We had no uniforms. We had no proper training from coaches. We were [just] a group of friends who decided to play on a higher level. Needless to say, we got obliterated during our first competition by elite schools such as NYU, Columbia, Yale [and] Rutgers,” said Ng, who is captain of the team, in an e-mail.
After this harsh dose of reality, the team regrouped and focused on recruitment. They added numerous players to their team including: junior Guido Tay-Lee, who trained with the Columbian Table Tennis National Team; freshman Kevin Lee, of the United States Junior Olympics Table Tennis Team; sophomore Jike Sun, who trained for the Beijing National Table Tennis Tea; and, the team’s “best player” according to Ng, freshman Scott Lurty.
Once the personnel had been recruited, the team was ready to try competing again and they went in full force.
They managed to place third in the fall session of the NCTTA competition and first place in the spring session to become the New York City regional winners and gained them a spot in the Nationals. But Ng maintains that their road wasn’t free of bumps after that.
“We were going to Nationals but [we] were not prepared in any way. We had no budget. We had no uniforms. We appealed for more money from USG [Undergraduate Student Government] but they decided to go on strike and our papers were not filled. The athletics departments rejected us. But after a lot of legwork, Baruch got us a fully covered trip and uniforms,” said Ng.
The team performed considerably well for their first time in the Nationals, losing their first bracket of matches but winning against every other school they played against, putting them toward the top of the bottom bracket, ranking 13 out of 24 overall.
“The competition was fierce and we learned a great deal,” said Ng. “We saw experts and professionals. We learned new techniques and strategies. We learned [from] our mistakes and know what to do to fix it.”
Lurty, who joined the team because of his friend and fellow member, freshman Kevin Lee, was also proud of how the group performed this year.
“I was very happy with how we performed [despite having] no structured training based in school, [instead] having to practice separately,” he said in an e-mail. “I want to get into Baruch Athletics and get gym time to play and hopefully have [team] continuity and develop our new players for next year.”
Looking to the future, one of team’s main goals is to become better known around campus and be considered a legitimate team.
“Table tennis is a growing Olympic sport. It is action-packed and requires just as much training as any other sport. We are relatively new. We do not have coverage. It is not a mainstream sport and [it] is rarely shown on television,” Ng said. “Table tennis is regarded as China’s national sport, and many Asian countries play [it]. But it is just unpopular in America because it’s not a ‘muscle’ sport, but [rather] a sport based on quickness, perception, and dexterity. The addition of table tennis to Baruch sports [would be] a great example [to show] how Baruch cares about student activities and non-mainstream sports [and encourage] those who enjoy it.
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