2025 Aurora Cup: A Triumphant Return
After a five-year break, the Aurora Cup made its long-awaited return on May 23–25, 2025 — and it came back in a big way! The 8th Aurora Cup brought together 293 registered players, with 273 actually showing up to compete over the Memorial Day weekend.
Originally, we planned to hold the tournament in January (10–12), but with both the US Nationals and the Illinois State Championships happening around the same time, registration capped out at just 180. That turnout just wasn’t enough, so we pulled the plug and moved the event to May. Clearly, the change worked — the response was fantastic!
Who Showed Up?
A total of 195 players came from Illinois, making it the most represented state by far. Wisconsin followed with 30 players, Minnesota with 11, and a group of 7 players each came from Florida, Iowa, and Michigan. We also had players from:
- Indiana – 6
- Missouri – 5
- Colorado – 4
- California – 3
- Arizona, Georgia, Texas, and Kansas – 2 each
- North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and New York – 1 each
Big thanks to everyone who traveled in — whether you were coming from across the street or across the country!
Tech and Table Tennis: A Winning Combo
This was our largest event ever using ttaurora.com, the site we’ve been building to handle everything from registration, match scheduling to score entry. Out of the 1,100+ matches played, fewer than 30 had to be entered manually — a huge improvement that saved us a ton of time and headaches.
That said, we did hit a few snags. Some players entered multiple events and made deep runs, which caused scheduling overlaps that pushed a few finals (like U1500 and Open Doubles) into Sunday. Next time, we’ll look into tweaking the scheduling logic to handle that better.
Shoutouts & Thanks
To Our Sponsor: JOOLA
Huge thank-you to JOOLA, and especially Kristen Bouchard, for continuing to support the Aurora Cup — even after we had to reschedule. Players consistently praised the quality of the tables, barriers, and balls. Your support made a difference.
To the Venue: Vaughan Athletic Center
Kara Reid, the Athletic Manager at Vaughan, was an absolute rock star. When the January date didn’t work out, she helped secure the May dates and made the whole transition smooth. That extra lead time was key to making the tournament a success.
To Our Logistics Partner: S&T Transport
Shoutout to Tim Stoyanov at S&T Transport, Inc. (312-800-2898). His team handled the equipment transport like pros. At one point, 42 tables and all the barriers didn’t seem like they’d fit in a single 53-foot trailer — but somehow, their driver repacked everything and made it work with room to spare. (On the way back, we barely fit it all again — so yes, that outbound load really was magic.)
Tournament Results and Pictures
Full results for the 2025 Aurora Cup are available on ttaurora.com. Just head to the tournament page and click the “Results” button — or go directly to the results using this link.
Below, you’ll find photos of the winners from each event. Congrats again to everyone who played — whether you left with a trophy or just had some great matches, we’re glad you were part of it!
That’s a wrap on the 2025 Aurora Cup! Thanks again to everyone who came out — whether you played one match or made it to the finals. Your energy, sportsmanship, and feedback are what make this tournament so much fun to organize. See you next year!
Behind the Scenes: Tournament Ops
Tournament operations were headed up by:
- Swavek Lorenc – Tournament Director
- Lijian Cai – Tournament Referee
- Umpires – Jorge Vanegas, Alexander Cai, Michael Wolski, and Narasimhan Ramakrishnan
We ran the whole tournament off ttaurora.com, which let players check their match times, table numbers, and input scores. There were still a few bugs (yes, some match slips had to be printed), but overall the system held up well — even with over 200 users logged in at the same time.
Special thanks to Lijian, who managed to keep matches running on time and even entered most of the manual scores himself. Together, we answered what felt like a million “When’s my next match?” questions at the control desk.
Some players didn’t use the built-in venue directions and ended up at the Eola Community Center instead (where we usually run smaller tournaments). Don’t be that guy next time — use the link!
Parking Worries (That Weren’t)
Vaughan staff were a bit concerned about parking for nearly 300 players, and they initially required us to budget for overflow parking shuttles and a security guard. But about three weeks out, they dropped that requirement, figuring the holiday weekend would mean fewer regular gym users. Turns out they were right — as you can see from the photo taken on Sunday around noon, the lot was only half full!
Venue Setup: Behind the Scenes
Here’s a little peek at what it took to get the venue ready for the Aurora Cup — because turning a massive gym into a full-on tournament space doesn’t just happen overnight!
Prep kicked off on May 14, when I (Swavek Lorenc) started hanging 400 feet of sunscreen plastic high up near the ceiling to block direct sunlight from hitting the courts. It took four evenings and over 10 hours to get it all in place.
Next up was marking the courts, which I squeezed in early Monday and Wednesday mornings (6–8 AM). That took about four more hours total.
On Thursday at noon, the truck rolled in with 42 tables, 540 barriers, and a bunch of other equipment. Unloading took over four hours — just me, Tom McCormack, and the driver. The barrier pallets were oversized and couldn’t fit on the loading platform, so we had to unload them in batches.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat, Tom and I jumped right into barrier assembly and managed to get through half of them in about 4.5 hours.
Friday morning at 7 AM, I was back at it, finishing the rest of the barriers by noon. Thankfully, Tom McCormack, Ethan Chen, and Marty Fornek showed up to help with the remaining tasks. We pre-positioned tables around the gym, and starting at 2 PM, we began moving them onto the courts. By 3:30 PM, half the gym was set up, and we turned our focus to the other half.
I was a bit nervous that we might not have enough barriers to live up to the “fully barriered courts” promise I’d made during registration — but we pulled it off. The newer barriers were taller than our old ones, which helped a lot. Realistically, we’d need about 40 more barriers to truly fully enclose all courts, but what we had was enough to keep balls from rolling onto neighboring courts.
By 4 PM, Lijian Cai, Alexander Cai, and Jorge Vanegas were installing and adjusting net sets on all 38 tables. Amazingly, we wrapped everything up just 10 minutes before the first Friday evening events kicked off at 6:30 PM!
The Takedown: A Race Against the Clock
We started breaking down the venue around 3 PM on Sunday, beginning with the last row of courts and removing tables and barriers as they were no longer needed. Thanks to a huge team effort from tournament officials — Lijian Cai, Alexander Cai, Jorge Vanegas, Michael Wolski — plus FVTTC club members (Agya Adueni, Deepa, Saravanan Ramakrishnan, Kaushik Saravanan, Ethan Chen, and one more clubmate), we managed to clear everything and leave the facility by 10:05 PM — just in the nick of time.
The next morning (Monday), I started disassembling the barriers with help from my son, Matthew Lorenc. We got all of them broken down by around 11 AM. After that, we prepped the tables: covering each one in a blue cloth and sliding thick cardboard over the tops for protection.
I found out the night before that, due to the holiday, Vaughan would close at 3 PM instead of the usual 10 PM. That meant I had to reschedule the truck’s arrival from 4:00 PM to 12:30 PM — and we just made it. Loading everything took until 4:45 PM, with the last two pallets being packed up outside the venue.
I came back Tuesday evening to take down the sunscreen, which took another three hours.
Comments & Suggestions
I received valuable feedback from several players and got some ideas for improvements of tournament operations and website functionality. Here they are:
Hi Swavek
My apologies for the delayed response.
I was very happy with the tournament. Most people clearly knew where they were playing, the venue was great and events ran on time (maybe the first tournament I’ve been to where it felt like all of my events happened as they were originally scheduled). I appreciate how quickly ratings were submitted and processed. Thanks so much for the legwork that went into making this tournament run smoothly, I will certainly be coming back if you hold it in future years.
The only piece of feedback for you with the ttaurora website (if others haven’t given you this feedback already) – I think it would be very useful to allow any player within a round robin to set the match score for others within their group, instead of only allowing players participating in the match to set the scores. This could allow the players that are waiting for their match to submit scores for the match they are spectating. This is especially useful if the players in the match are using their devices for recording, or if they are having difficulty with the website. However, I understand why you might not have that as the current set up so players are responsible for their own matches. Just a thought to consider for future improvements.
Thanks again and I look forward to future tournaments held in Aurora.
Andrew Schwartz
Hi Coach,
Thanks for organizing the tournament. It was VERY WELL ORGANIZED!!!!
We would like to take this moment to appreciate how well you organized the tournament and how well the app was useful and helpful to point and track the scores/games.
And the setup was quite amazing and very well organized.
I see “Rohit Lokesh” took 4th place in the U800 category.
So just thought of checking if he qualifies for any trophy/certificate which would motivate him.
Anyway thank you coach. Appreciate all your efforts!
Looking forward to more tournaments.
Thanks,
Lokesh Devan
Hi Swavek,
In a word, fantastic! The tournament organization was smooth and impressively well-managed. As my first competitive table tennis experience, it provided an invaluable opportunity to learn more about the game in a structured environment. The wide-ranging skill sets displayed by participants created an excellent learning opportunity, allowing me to observe various techniques and strategies from across the USATT community. The atmosphere was both competitive and relaxing. I particularly appreciated the efficiency of the match scheduling, which allowed for maximum playing time throughout the day. Looking ahead, I hope to participate in future tournaments to continue tracking my progress and connecting with fellow enthusiasts.
Great tournament. Best run tournament I have played in!
James Speir
Swavek,
I’m not happy with my results, but they do look correct in SimplyCompete.
However, I did notice a big error while browsing some other results:
https://usatt.simplycompete.com/t/tr/15401?embedded=&uai=175564
Notice that it has Alex Cazacu both winning the Open Singles SE Final and losing the Open Singles SE Semi-Final. Clearly just a reversed entry for his semi-final win over Kovalov.
Aaron
The error was in the match results file sent to USATT not in the results entered into the website. The bug in report generation was immediately corrected and the corrected match results were sent to USATT.
Hi Swavek,
Thanks for the update. This was my first tournament, and I was wondering what the deal was with my rating and USATT number.
The tournament was very nice. Great venue, and everything seemed to run very smoothly. I found the app to be super helpful. Someone did not show up for one of my groups, so we proceeded because we saw he never checked in on the app.
Overall, I had a good time and I would play another tournament.
Tom Fauvell
Really great tournament, going to the app for table assignments and scoring is a big improvement. Nice work.
Michael J. Golde
Awesome thanks so much!!! Went up 400 points great turn out and I’ll see you when I get back from training in France!!
Nathaniel Fox
Swavek,
The venue was the best I have seen with open space and nice decore and the flooring was top notch. The trophies were also beautiful and unique.
The cons were (1)I signed up for 3 events and 2 of those events had 2 people defaulted which meant there were less plays for such expense which is $125 for hardly any play (2 plays for U1000 and U1400 and 3 plays for Women’s) (2) Women’s Event is always more expensive than Open’s (3) Why was Finals event not even scored by referees? I noticed that they were eating but couldn’t one of them be helping them? (4)There were no hot foods available for purchase on-site.
Next time, I may have to ask one of the referees to score for us because there were disputes about the scoring when the opponent didn’t call out the score, when we decided he would score, and when I scored, he disputed etc.
Thanks,
Irene
Hi Swavek,A good tournament and an excellent error free software that the players have control over for entering match score. People have made mistakes transferring match data from paper to computer in the past. This resulted in incorrect ratings that required a 2nd round of corrections.
One improvement suggestion to avoid any conflicts would be to add an acknowledgement option for the losing player to agree to the scores… meaning both players acknowledge the match score.
Regarding the facility, it was an excellent facility. Nice floor and good lighting. Some suggestions below… may not be in your control though…
1. It’s an all day tournament. Either have the cafeteria provide basic food, pizza, sandwiches, coffee on site etc. or allow players enough time to get food from outside.
2. The large glass window on the top wall impacts visibility during play. Again, it may not be in your control, but it will help a lot.
Overall, A rating for the tournament.
best regards,
Ejaz Shah
Hi Swavek:
The software and everything else about the tournament was spot on. The facilities were top notch. Thanks for your effort and hopefully this will be a recurrent event
Shahabul Arfeen MD
Thank you for the update. I believe this is the first time that TT tournament using an app for the match. It is futuristic and friendly user. I love and it was well organized tournament.
Alexander Anuraga
Hi Swavek, thanks for running such a great tournament, I really enjoyed it.
Overall I liked the tournament software and found it to be a big improvement over the standard paper-and-clipboard method.
A few suggestions:
- Make it possible to see the current status/scores of all groups in an event, not just my own. This would help when figuring out how long it will be until the next round can start.
- Don’t fill in names on the tournament bracket until there is a confirmed winner of a group. Starting the bracket with the name of the highest rated player of each group is confusing.
- It would be nice if there was an automated start to tournament bracket matches once both players are determined. Or at least a notification to the officials that the match is read to start. In several cases both my opponent and I were at the table ready to go but couldn’t play because the match hadn’t been started by an official. This led to wasted time while I had to go to the official table and ask for the match to be started.
Thanks again, I hope the event was a success for you and that you’ll be able to continue to host tournaments!
Scott Finley
Hi Swavek,
The tournament was extremely well managed and smooth. The software was brilliant, well documented and seamless. It was a great experience being part of this tournament and I hope you can continue to organize it. It is extremely important also because sanctioned tournaments in the Midwest are very rare (I myself travelled 5 hours from Missouri to attend the tournament and this is the only one that’s within a reasonable distance for me to attend all year). Thank you for everything!
Shubham
Thank you Swavec, you did a great job, it was awesome event.
Dmitriy Miroshnyk
Swavek,
I really enjoyed this tournament! My only criticism is I didn’t see any example trophies displayed and there were no merch tables. A couple people needed rubber and such. Maybe an emergency equipment merch table would be good in the future. I helped one guy out because I had glue with me.
Great job & great tournament! See you next year!
John S.
Thank you for everything.
It was smooth and the times ,the tables…perfect.
The only thing is that the venue was very far from the airport ( coming from Kentucky) and no food available there.
Efrain Gonzales
Good Morning Sir…Thanks for the Tournament we had a lot of fun…I have just a concern though about 3800 Doubles. The champion team combined rating during the tournament was 4025. Why they are able to play when they are over 3800? I just noticed it today when looking at the players rating. I know that this is over but if we have any explanation regarding this matter. Thanks
Lowell
Thank you for organizing such a great tournament for all the table tennis players! My name is Zihan Li and I got 3rd place in U3800 doubles event with my partner Stephen He. I remember you took pictures for us on the podium. Could you share that original photo with me when you have time? Sadly we didn’t have any other friend to take picture for us, but we really want to memorize this exciting moment. I would greatly appreciate your help!
Thanks,
Zihan
Good evening, Swavek,
I apologize for not responding to any of your emails earlier after the tournament. I do want to thank you for organizing such an amazing tournament; though it was only my second time participating in a USATT ranked tournament, I truly appreciate how seamless and well-organized it was! Especially with your online app, it truly allowed for a highly professional, extremely swift and easy experience. Your online app should be adopted by USATT for all tournaments, really! It was great to meet you in person and I hope participate in future tournaments organized by you. Thank you so much!
With best regards,
Toufiq Hayder
Swavek
Thanks for a great tournament. Well run and fun too. Nice job!
Jim Gableman
Hi Swavek,
Thanks a lot for the arrangement.
Look forward to the next one!
Chi
Opening of a New Club
Tips for Next Aurora Cup
- Use dark colored chairs so they don’t interfere with a white ball
- Install black plastic over large windows on the north side of the gym to block the light
- Make & sell tournament t-shirts. Let players pre-order them during registration to get the correct count in each size.
- Ask Engelbert to open an equipment store during the tournament. Some players wanted to glue new rubbers but didn’t bring their own glue.
fvttc.org 