As the Div A winner, Jimmy Butler, left with his cool $600 dollar prize, he commented to the staff of ATTC that "you all run the best tournament series that I know, everything is always consistent and on-time."
I think we take that for granted, the fact that we have a tournament with 68 players that always starts prelim pools at 9am sharp, 2nd pool always starts 1:30pm sharp, and everyone is out of the building at 7pm. Our tournaments start on time because of our fantastic volunteers Cynthia and Ken who are in charge of sign-ins and entry access. Pools finish in time for lunch because of the ATTC staff members like Darren and Hazel directing players to finish their groups in open tables. And coordinating all of this meticulous scheduling is our tournament director and forever young Tuan Tran, who just celebrated his (undisclosed) birthday yesterday.
Without his tireless puppeteering of the tournament operations, we could not bring these tournaments to the wider table tennis community in Texas. Tuan gives up his playing time as an elite player to give back to the community and that deserves praise every tournament. Now on to the winners:
Divisions | First | Second | Third | Fourth |
A | Jimmy Butler | Chia Hao Chang | Andy Wang | Thang Vu |
B | Swar Patel | Neave Joy | Luke Lin | Yizhou Zhao |
C | Sahaj Ramachandran | Ethan Jiao | Van Savell | Aarudhran Aswin Kumar |
D | Richard Stanley | Weihsuan Wong | Tairan Deng | Nicholas Mott |
E | Brandon Babot | Olaf Westheider | Qingyu Zhou | Lekha Subbaiah |
ATTC took home all three trophies in Division B, 1st place in Division C, two trophies in Division D, and 1st place in Division E. We're defending our home turf well! Here's the faces of the winners:
TOP GAINERS
NAME | Initial Rating | New Rating | Points Gained |
Tairan Deng | 1118 | 1394 | 276 |
Zhen Chen | 1445 | 1697 | 252 |
Weihsuan Wong | 1365 | 1497 | 132 |
Jenny Pobelova | 1655 | 1758 | 103 |
Anthony Juarbe | 1368 | 1409 | 41 |
Aditya Chirayath | 1810 | 1848 | 38 |
Lillian Ding | 1232 | 1268 | 36 |
Brian Doherty | 1306 | 1330 | 24 |
Nicholas Mickowski | 1525 | 1548 | 23 |
Teddy Bricker | 1667 | 1678 | 11 |
Neave Joy | 1743 | 1754 | 11 |
Mohit Ganji | 1305 | 1314 | 9 |
Qing Chai | 1939 | 1944 | 5 |
This was a killer tournament for the Austin adult players in the community with the top 5 here all being adults. I've seen everyone on this list at the club tirelessly grinding on their game while juggling their professional, educational and personal obligations and that that hard work really paid off this tournament.
Some notable personal best ratings include: Tairan Deng at 1394, Zhen Chen at 1697, Weihsuan Wong at 1497, Jenny Pobelova at 1758, Anthony Juarbe at 1409, Lillian Ding at 1268, and Nicholas Mickowski at 1548. I think the average level of adult regulars at ATTC has skyrocketed recently and it's a trend that is unlikely to reverse course.
That said, we all know the coming tide of ATTC Juniors will crash into us, with Aditya Chirayath and Mohit Ganji also both hitting their PBs in this tournament.
This is my first tournament write-up and one of my best tournaments. Coincidence? Probably not! I believe that our ratings are a lagging indicator of our own personal growth. So much of the time, our ratings fluctuate up and down as despite our perceived efforts. Table tennis is such a frustrating game (I'm sure we've all had this thought before). But because the ATTC community is so supportive in creating training opportunities, it incentives everyone to not only get better individually, but also help each other out in improving together. Ratings don't always reflect that, but I believe that if we trust the process and let steel sharpen steel, there's no way we won't hit our goals in time.
See everyone in the next tournament!