The 7th Aurora Cup started on Friday January 17th, just when a snow storm hit Chicago area and halted all airplane traffic into the city. While the number of registered players was a record high – 325 – 31 players didn’t show up due to the winter weather conditions. This is a second year in a row when bad weather caused many players to miss the tournament.

venue from above larger — Venue with 38 tables setup

Majority of entries were from IL and other mid western US states, but we also had players who visited from Brazil, China, Nigeria and Canada. Results were submitted for 287 players and there were 7 more who only played in doubles. Most players came from IL (161 / 56%), WI (23), MN (15), MI (13), CA (10), IN (9), 5 from GA, IA, MO, NC, TX; 4 from OH; 3 from CO, MD, MA; 1 from Brazil, China, Canada, FL, WA, NY, SC, MS.

The highest rated player to ever enter our tournament was Thiago Farias Monteiro (2768) from Brazil who is currently ranked 69th in the world. We also received entry from Xi Sheng of China (est. 2750) who used to play in Chinese table tennis super league for the Anhui team and Daming Zhao (2573) who used to play on a Chinese National Team. According to some players this was the strongest group of elite players to ever enter Aurora Cup. 15 of them were above 2500 USATT rating.

If you want to relive the excitement of this year’s Aurora Cup here is an nice video courtesy of TableTennisChicago.com (Jerry Dydynski).

2020 Aurora Cup Highlights

Improvements

We introduced several improvements which resulted in better experience for participants.

Public Announcement System

We moved the control desk from its usual central location to behind the court #2 just so we could gain access to the public announcement system with 16 overhead speakers. We hooked up wired microphone into the amplifier and were finally heard in the entire venue. We had to learn to keep the microphone at just the right distance away from the face or else the voice was garbled but towards the end of the tournament we mastered that skill.

Buzzers

We used the lightweight buzzers like the ones that are used at restaurants to let players know that they can play their single elimination round match. Ed Hogshead came up with this idea a few years ago and it looks like players liked them a lot. This reduced the number of disruptive announcements we had to make over P.A.

Coat Racks

In one of the earlier tournaments someone suggested we provide coat racks. This year John and Jim Brandt asked park district management if we could borrow a couple of them and park district agreed. I saw many coats on these racks so they definitely were worth providing. They lessened amount of clothing taking up the benches in the alleys between the courts.

coat racks

Venue Setup

This year we setup the venue in record time. We started with hanging black plastic screen which blocks sunlight on Saturday afternoon. Jim Brandt, John Brandt and his daughter Rebecca and me did it in 4.5 hours.

On Sunday afternoon me and my son Matthew marked all 38 courts. There was almost nothing going on at that time in the Field House so the marking progressed very quickly. We started at 2:30 pm were done by 6 pm.

On Thursday I went to Rockford to help load all table tennis equipment onto the truck. It took 4 people – Ed, me and Marcin and Jan from Highlander Transportation about 2 hours in freezing cold to load 38 tables, 8 crates of barriers and two pallets of various equipment into the trailer. When we arrived in Aurora we were joined by Tom McCormack and it took 4 of us 1 hour to unload it all.

That evening 9 volunteers from Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) came in and assembled 440 barriers from 5:30 to 9 pm with a break for dinner. They were organized by Ethan Talreja and driven to the venue by Narayanan Nagarathnam.

IMSa volunteers

On Friday we got very lucky because there wasn’t a planned activity in the Field House from 11:30 so the park district manager Mitchell Bunkofske allowed us to start setup before noon rather than 2 pm that was planned. Tom McCormack and I were almost finished with positioning tables around the Field House perimeter around that time so we were in good position to take advantage of this right away. We started setup on court 4 right away and shortly after that were joined by Danny Seemiller who came to Aurora early to avoid the snowstorm.

Friday setup crew full — Friday setup crew from left: John Brandt, Narayanan Nagarathnam, Uma Nagarathnam, Jim Brandt, Sanae Hirschler, Tom McCormack

The setup went very quickly on the remaining courts when they became available and we were completely done by 5 pm, including setup of 2 show courts which itself takes about 2 hours. Those last two courts were greatly helped by Sanae Hirschler one of our umpires who came in earlier, and remaining setup tasks were completed swiftly by John and Jim Brandt, Tom McCormack, Uma and Narayanan Nagarathnam. I want to thank all of the volunteers who came to help with this enormous undertaking. Many players commented on how well the venue was prepared and all of those who volunteered their time can be proud of this accomplishment.

Take down was also swift. Another group of volunteers from IMSA arrived about 6 pm on Sunday and moved all equipment into the service garage where they proceeded to disassemble the barriers. With the help from Tom McCormack, Jim Brandt and John Brandt the show courts, control desk and podium were all removed from the Field House into their proper storage. We were done before 10 pm.

On Monday the remaining 100 or so barriers were disassembled by me and my son Matthew in about 2 hours and all equipment was packed into crates or onto pallets and ready for pickup about noon. We then went to take down the black plastic sunscreen and by the time the truck arrived at 2:30 the plastic was down. Loading the truck took another hour with 4 people loading. I went to Rockford to help Ed Hogshead unload the truck and move all equipment into his storage units.

Tournament Operations

We are fortunate to have a very experienced tournament crew who knows how to handle many tasks which make the tournament a pleasant experience for our players.

Score entry was done by Zach Moy, Cecilia Navata. Trophy unpacking and packing was done by Uma Nagarathnam, Justin Wu, Wesley Wu, John Brandt, Jim Brandt and Cecilia Navata.

Tournament Crew 2 — Zach Moy, Cecilia Navata and Uma Nagarathnam.

Score entry was so efficient that except for Friday events, all matches were completed before 10 pm.

Results

Event	First Place	Second Place	Third Place	Fourth Place
U800	Chandra Kothamasu	Jeevith Veera	Daniel Garcia	Denise Russo
U1750	Pranav Shahal	Eric To	Maziar Mohammadi	Eryk Emilianowicz
U1500	Jered Shilling	Lawer Dixon Jr	Atif Bilgin	Amina Batkhuyag
Open Singles	Sheng Xi	Thiago Farias Monteiro	Sharon Alguetti	Daming Zhao
U1200	Anthony Ty	Nathan To	Ethan Talreja	Scott Finley
Under 14 Youth	Nandan Naresh	Changbo Lu	Aarthi Loganathan	Isabella Xu
50 and Over	David Roberts	Janusz Franeczek	Leon Li	Kevin Nabity
U1900	Brett Stewart	Pawel Zych	John Brandt	Maziar Mohammadi
U1600	Mason Carter	Luke Davey	Atif Bilgin	Ayush Lingam
U2000	Steve Gonzales	Kevin Nabity	Slawomir Gacki	Scott Meredith
U2300	Felipe Morita	Sabrina Zhu	Viktor Bedriichuk	Joe Podvin
Open Doubles	Daming Zhao / Ye Tian	Yichi Zhang / Sid Naresh	Gal Alguetti / Sharon Alguetti	Kai Jiang / Nandan Naresh
U1800	Pranav Shahal	Maziar Mohammadi	Thomas Deering	Jamy Sneeden
U2600	Tianrui Zhang	Ye Tian	Bruno Ventura Dos Anj	Zongqi Henry Zhong
U1700	Maziar Mohammadi	Meng-Yu Wang	Kathy Tang	Anaya Gokarn
Under 18 Youth	Sid Naresh	Nandan Naresh	Eliel Sosis	Maria Sirakova
U2100	Igor Falchuk	Aniruddh Shahal	Rachel Wang	Aaron Avery
U1400	Luke Davey	Stoyan Stoychev	Alfred Graham	Kosta Manahov
40 and Over	Wale Wahab	Wojciech Wolski	Leon Li	Janusz Franeczek
U2400	Nandan Naresh	Eliel Sosis	Oliver Gartner	Michael Wolski
Women Singles	Rachel Wang	Sabrina Zhu	Maria Sirakova	Isabella Xu
U3800 Doubles	Paul Victor Pashuku / Stanley Harn	Igor Falchuk / Michael Godlewski	Felipe Morita / Claudia Leow	Maziar Mohammadi / Ayush Lingam
U2200	Anish Shankar	Vinay Chandra	Changbo Lu	Viktor Bedriichuk
U1000	Julian Albulescu	Saye Vikram Karthikeyan	Chandra Kothamasu	Daniel Garcia