Table Tennis Equipment to Take You to the Next Level!

The USA West Region ITTF Hopes camp and tournament held at the Alameda Table Tennis Center from Friday April 10- Sunday April 12 was a big success!

11 boys and 6 girls participated in the Hopes Camp. Participants came from more than half a dozen different West Coast clubs. All were enthusiastic and really worked well together. The camp included fitness with agility ladder, relays, and sidestep races. Drills included consistency Drills, Foot Work Drills, Service and Service Return, Attack after Service, Multi-Ball and Match Play for tournament preparation.

Coaches Pieke Franssen, Avishy Schmidt, Jackie Lee, Jonathan Nielsen and Dave Hanson coached the 3 x 3 hour sessions.

On Saturday in between the morning and evening sessions, players who did not travel home, took a well deserved break to go out for lunch and explore the natural history programs and exhibits at Alameda’s Crab Cove Visitor Center at Crown Memorial State Beach.

The Crab Cove visitor center is dedicated to interpreting relationships between people and the earth's marine environment. Since 1979, the Crab Cove Visitor Center has been connecting people with the marine and shoreline life, as well as Alameda history. Visitors can see bay creatures in the 800-gallon aquarium system, use interactive stations to view microscopic animals, build a crab from the inside out, or get a lug worm's view of the mudflats.

The tournament had a full draw of 12 boys, but the withdrawal of 3 girls just prior to the tournament left only 9 girls to participate. Irina Hellwig and Peter Chung officiated the tournament, which ran on time starting at 2:00 pm with the boys final concluding around 7 pm.

The boys event had 2 groups of 6, with Sahil Puri, Shawn Fong , Kai Zarehbin and Sharv Utpat advancing to the championship bracket. The girls event had 1 group of 5 and one group of 4 with Tina Chen, Ava Fu, Saanvi Srivastava and Charlotte He advancing to the championship bracket.

The girls final featuring Alameda’s Tina Chen and SVTTC’s Ava Fu was an exciting match with big momentum shifts. Tina was well up in the first game, and had 5 game points before Ava came back and won 14-12. A motivated Tina then took the next 2 games 11-8, 11- 4. Tina was on fire and leading 6-0 in game 4, when Ava came alive and won the next 6 points. However, Tina was unwilling to let Ava take the lead and scored to go up 7-6. They were then neck and neck before Tina finally closed the match out 11-9 in game 4. A birthday Tina is sure to remember.

In the boys final, top seed Sahil Puri from ICC edged second seed ITT’s lefty Shawn Fong in 4 close games. 12-10, 9-11, 12-10, 11-8.

The finish order for the top 8 boys was:

1. Puri, Sahil
2. Fong, Shawn
3. Zarehbin, Kai
4. Utpat, Sharv
5. Du, Ethan
6. Mahajan, Mudit
7. Anand, Gautam
8. Zhang, Henrik

The finish order for the top 8 girls was:

1. Chen, Tina
2. Fu, Ava
3. Srivastava, Saanvi
4. He, Charlotte
5. Raghavan, Anika
6. Saju, Neha
7. Lin, Michelle
8. Liu, Nicole

Full results are viewable at Omnipong.com

Hopes Camp and tournament photos are at Flikr

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