The tournament took place on April 6th, 2019 at the Eola Community Center in Aurora, IL. The tournament was filled to capacity again with only 2 players not showing up. This tournament was special because we had a 5 time Olympian participate in it. Fabiola Ramos who represented Venezuela in 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000 and 1996 Olympics entered the tournament and competed in the top group.
Sponsors
We would like to thank our sponsor – Paddle Palace – for providing us with 4 dozen 3 star white Nittaku balls. You may be of different opinion, but I consider them the best plastic balls in the world. They are very durable and have very uniform bounce. We distributed most of the Paddle Palace catalogs to you so please support them through your purchases.
Tournament Team
Thanks to the experienced tournament team we accomplished all preparation tasks in 2.5 hours on Friday. We started taking tables and barriers out of storage at about 8 pm and after we were given the other half of the gym about 9:30 we had very tight window to complete setup. Luckily our team is very efficient, so were done with setup of all table tennis tables, barriers, seats for players, control desk, net measurements by 10:30. The team consisted of Jim Brandt, John Brandt, Michael Curry and Swavek Lorenc.
During the tournament, Jim and John also reinforced the wood rack for storing barriers which was straining under the weight of 100 purple Newgy barriers. Now it is more sturdy and safer to move around, and it should serve our team well for the next few years.
Andrew Moy and Jim Brandt entered the scores and Swavek Lorenc made announcements of winners and handled trophy awards and picture taking. We were done with the last awards ceremony at 7:30.
Take down of the tournament equipment started around 6:30 pm and was completed fast with the help of the same people plus Glenn Cackovic. Here is the team plus Sava (Micheal’s son). We were totally done at 7:53.
Results
| Group | First Place | Second Place | Third Place | Fourth Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group A | Sid Naresh | Oliver Gartner | Janusz Franeczek | Patryk Zyworonek |
| Group B | Arcot Naresh | Tadao (tom) Inui | Aniruddh Shahal | Yusuke Kuboki |
| Group C | Yokutkhon Metinova | John Brandt | Zayd Syed | Freddie (Zheyua Fan |
| Group D | Brian Ngeunjuntr | Paul Krynski | Jim Gableman | Jim Biggs |
| Group E & F | Frank Kang | Doug Litwiller | Hanchen Jiang | Joon Lee |
| Group G | Asif Rehmani | Lawer Dixon Jr | Adam Kokosinski | Jonathan Yarak |
| Group H | Pranav Shahal | Sathiyaraj Jagadesh | Amina Batkhuyag | Naureen Sajwani |
| Group I | Nitin Fuldeore | Tsetsen Batkhuyag | Scott Finley | Anand Sankara |
| Group J | Susanna Eschbach | Nathanael Stevenson | Michael Curry | Miguel Yu |
| Group K | Darya Tenenbaum | Jake Giuliano | Nathan To | Hailey Fong |
| Group L | Bridget Maul | Brian Vachta | Quinton Smith | Audrey To |
Pictures
Here are the winners on the podium
fvttc.org 