2025 Aurora Fall Open Report

The 2025 Aurora Fall Open was held on Sunday, September 7th, attracting 93 players from Illinois and several surrounding states. You can view and sort the full list of participants by state here.

Registration for the tournament opened on July 3rd and quickly gained momentum. All 96 available spots were filled five weeks before the event, demonstrating strong interest and enthusiasm from the table tennis community. Once registration was full, players joined a waiting list, and several were ultimately able to compete as spots opened up.

Setup and Take Down

The Fox Valley Park District graciously allowed us to begin setting up at 6:30 PM on Saturday evening. Initially, I was concerned that the time allotted wouldn’t be sufficient to complete setup before the facility closed at 9:00 PM.

Fortunately, the close proximity of fully assembled tables and barriers made setup efficient and straightforward. With the valuable help of Miquel and Kevin from the Park District staff:

• All 12 tables were in position by 6:45 PM.
• The 100 barriers were set up by 7:45 PM.

I spent some extra time setting up the public announcement system, placing it at the center of the gym this year to improve sound coverage so everyone could hear announcements clearly.

Afterward, we washed the tables, adjusted nets, brought out the podium cubes, and set up the control desk tables. Miquel and Kevin brought in and setup the chairs, and by the end of the evening, almost everything was ready. The only remaining tasks for Sunday morning were attaching table numbers and installing sun-blocking cardboard in the windows to reduce glare.

Take Down

Take down began around 7:30 PM on Sunday with the help of Lijian Cai and Michael Wolski.

By the time the last match ended at 8:40 PM, we had already folded 10 tables and hung 80% of the barriers on the storage rack.

The remaining barriers and tables were put away by 8:45 PM.

Final cleanup tasks were completed by 8:56 PM, wrapping up a smooth and efficient close to the tournament.

Tournament Operations

This was our fifth tournament using the ttAurora.com website for check-in and score entry. Players have grown increasingly comfortable with the system, resulting in only a handful of questions about logging in, checking in, or submitting scores.

Our tournament staff included:

Swavek Lorenc – Tournament Director

Lijian Cai – Tournament Referee

Michael Wolski – Umpire

Ratings and Results

The tournament report and match scores were sent to USATT on Monday at 3:00 PM and processed by Wednesday at 6:00 PM. The updated ratings file arrived from USATT shortly after midnight on Friday and was uploaded to ttAurora.com by Friday evening.

Players can now check their updated ratings easily by logging into the site on their phones.

Group results are available online:

Pictures

Below are photos of the group winners. Some players are not pictured as they had to leave before final results were announced.