2015 JOOLA Aurora Spring Open attracted 96 players from Chicagoland and surrounding states. We had only one no show, so all but 1 of 12 groups had a full roster of 8 players. Despite a failure of tournament director to communicate starting times, the tournament ran on time with second group of players starting at 2 pm sharp and ending at 7:30 pm. The playing conditions were good with 12 identical tables and individually barriered courts. But the lighting conditions were subpar since over 100 fluorescent bulbs were not working. One of the windows on the west side was not blocked, letting sunlight stream in and making tables 1 and 7 difficult to play on. I already prepared additional 4 cardboard sheets to eliminate this issue at the next tournament.
The new plastic ball proved to be quite fragile with many balls broken on particularly hard hit shots. We used up all 50 balls for this tournament when usually 36 should be enough for the tournament with this many participants.
Cleanup after the tournament took only 1 hour and 30 minutes, which is a record. This can be attributed mainly to the new barrier rack built for storing Newgy barriers which eliminates the need to disassemble 40 barriers. Of course it would take longer without the help of 5 volunteers.
I would like to thank the following individuals for making this tournament a success.
- Meinhard Korte for sponsoring the tournament and providing the new plastic balls.
- Justin Korte for helping with assembly of barriers.
- Narayan, Manikandan and Uma Nagarathnam for helping with both setup and take down of tables, barriers and cleanup.
- Jacek Wisniewski – refereeing and cleanup afterwards
- Evelyn Wisniewski – controls desk – data entry, checkin and cleanup afterwards
- Andrew Moy – umpiring and data entry at the control desk.
- John Brandt, Jim Brandt – cleaning the tables, attaching table numbers, placing cardboard in the windows on the running track to block the sunlight.
From left to right: Swavek Lorenc (T.D), the sponsor (Meinhard Korte representing JOOLA) and Justin Korte – store manager
Control Desk crew: Evelyn Ho (running the control desk), Swavek Lorenc (T.D), Jacek Wisniewski (referee)
Andrew Moy umpiring one of the most contentious matches.
Results
| Group | First Place | Second Place | Third Place | Fourth Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group 1 – A |
Artur Kurek | Janusz Franeczek | Ihor Falchuk | Salman Syed |
| Group 2 – B |
Harsh Shah | Ejaz Shah | Gediminas Zilys | Tadao (Tom) Inui |
| Group 3 – C |
Narasimhan Tige Ramakrishnan | Sylwester Sobota | Mariusz Merchut | Kian Beyranvand |
| Group 4 – D |
Zachary Moy | Piotv Soja | Edgaras Zilys | Robert Douglass |
| Group 5 – E |
Aliraza Ashiqali | Samuel Kim | Jeffrey Liao | Josh Chung |
| Group 6 – F |
Hammond Hui | Jedidiah Chung | Sam Adarkwa | Sandor Feher |
| Group 7 – G |
Arsen Gaysin | John Zhong Liu | Ivan Tchakarov | Juan Ilundain |
| Group 8 – H |
Daryl Cheung | Mauricio Reyes Higuera | Matthew Kim | Vijay Talwar |
| Group 9 – I |
Lijian Cai | Paul Krynski | Brian Coons | Mukund Raghunath |
| Group 10 – J |
Sheikh Osmani | Sarvesh Rao | Madison Chao | Maithreyi Parthasarathy |
| Group 11 – K |
Sangita Naresh | Sriram Swami | Satej Sukthankar | Alagappan Thirunavukkaras |
| Group 12 – L |
Jibran Fakhruddin | Haadiya Fakhruddin | Taohan Ni | Tanay Vutukuru |
Pictures
Below are the pictures of winners in each group.
I have taken a lot of pictures but many of them are blurry because the players moved too fast :). I uploaded 200 pictures to Picassa here.
I would like to thank all participants for signing up for this tournament. The next tournament in this venue will be on June 20th.
Swavek Lorenc
Tournament Director
fvttc.org 