2012 Infogix Aurora Open Report

Fox Valley Table Tennis Club hosted its first 1-star USATT sanctioned tournament in 7 years on June 24th, 2012.  The tournament attracted 80 players mostly from Illinois but also from Wisconsin, Indiana and Minnesota.  The tournament was a culmination of several months of preparation which involved:

• securing the sponsors: (Infogix, Inc of Naperville, Paddle Palace and Newgy),
• designing the blank entry form
• marketing the tournament at various local tournaments by collecting contacts and distributing blank entry forms
• taking action pictures for a poster, designing it and mailing it to local clubs to spread the word about the tournament
• modifying software running this website to enable concurrent online registration for this and Fox Valley Open recreational tournament
• learning OmniPong software for running tournament operations
• finding volunteers who were willing to take the USATT Club Umpire exam and serve as umpires during tournament.
• finding a referee.  One of our club players (Jacek Wisniewski) eventually took both the USATT club umpire exam and a much harder USATT Referee exam and passed both with flying colors.  He served as our referee.

So as you can see, there was quite a bit going on behind the scenes to make the tournament a success.  For a new upstart tournament we did quite well as far as signups go.  We only had 2 no shows, 1 drop out due to injury which left only 4 spots open out of 144 available.  One person showed up on the day of the tournament and played in 1 event.

Despite these preparations and 12 available tables, there were delays during the tournament which frustrated many players.  Those delays were caused by our failure to promptly schedule matches on available tables.  In the end 6 players left before they could complete their matches.  Only one of those left due to injury.

We were supposed to start at 9 am sharp but actually started playing official matches at 9:20.  The last match, the U-1600 final ended at 7:40 pm which was over 1 and half hours later than anticipated.  We had the gym rented till from 8 am to 9 pm.  Cleanup afterwards took another hour.

I would like to express my gratitude to the following individuals for their contribution to organization and conduct of this tournament:

• Bobby Koritala, Senior Vice-President of Operations, Products, Marketing and Business Development at Infogix, who agreed to sponsor our tournament
• Kristen Paral, Graphic Designer at Infogix, who designed the blank entry form, the poster and the banner hanging over the podiums
• Mark Johnston, Marketing Department Team Lead at Infogix, who organized gift bags and coordinated work on poster and banner.
• ChenChing Woo of Infogix, who took action photographs used on the poster and during the tournament
• Natalia Sniqurskaya – our club member who appeared in the photos used on the poster along with me
• Ed Hogshead – USATTT Regional Coordinator for Midwest – who reviewed and approved our Tournament Sanction application and served as an umpire at the tournament and recommended use of OmniPong software to run the tournament
• Jacek Wisniewski for taking the exams necessary to become the referee and helping with cleanup afterwards
• Federico Bassetti for serving as an umpire
• Jorge Vanegas for serving as a Chief Umpire
• Wilson Chen for taking the umpire exam and serving as umpire and helping with cleanup afterwards
• Craig Krum – the author of OmniPong software for teaching us how to use the software and helping with generating all materials that are part of tournament report to USATT and publishing results on the web.
• Rajeev Sharma of Killerspin for donating 5 scoreboards which were used at a tournament
• Larry Thoman of Newgy for donating 5 additional court barriers
• Judy Hoarfrost of Paddle Palace for donating 2 dozen highest quality 3-star Nittaku balls and 24 white training balls
• Danielle and Matthew Lorenc – who helped loading and unloading the court barriers and all other equipment we used at the tournament, ran the check-in process.
• Matthew Morris, John Brandt, J. Bryant Evans, Stephen Claflin, players who setup the tables, assembled the barriers and attached the nets.
• If missed someone I apologize.

Here is our officials team (minus Jorge Vanegas).  From left to right: Wilson Chen, Ed Hogshead, Jacek Wisniewski, Swavek Lorenc and Federico Bassetti.  We tried to look professional to show that even a small local tournament can be conducted according to the highest standards.

 

 

Tournament participants could learn about their group assignments from this board.  The scores were entered on these neat score sheets.

Results

Here are the results.  Click on the link to see the PDF showing detailed results of each event.

Event	First Place	Second Place	Third Place
Open Singles RR	Spenser Minh Lam	Leon Li	Federico Bassetti
Under 2200 RR	Spenser Minh Lam	Leon Li	Arkadiusz Zyworonek
Under 2000 RR	Krzysztof Szostak	Sonny M. Henderson	Ejaz Shah
Under 1800 RR	John Brandt	George Vaughn	Antonio Campbell
Under 1600 RR	Akash Pardeshi	David Soltwisch	Gordon Annan
Under 1300 RR	Akash Pardeshi	Jeff Schiff	Krzysztof Fudala
Under 1000 RR	Taher Dohadwala	Sid Naresh	Camilo Evangelista
Over 50 RR	John Brandt	Rod Sneath	David Soltwisch
Juniors RR	Sid Naresh	Michael Adel Ibrahim	Taher Dohadwala

 

Match results were sent to USATT on Tuesday and the Tournament Report was mailed on Wednesday.  However due to US open held this week the ratings are not expected to be updated until after July 5th.

Here are the winners on the podium:

Action shots

And finally some action shots taken by Mr. Woo.

Comments

Here are the comments about the tournament from participants.

Enjoy,

Swavek Lorenc

Tournament Director