The UCSD table tennis team finished off its first season as a competitive squad by finishing fourth in the Collegiate National Table Tennis Championships in Ft. Worth, Texas, April 1 through April 3.
Rally’s on: Tom Plaisted (above) and the UCSD table tennis team finished fourth in the nation in its inaugural season.
A table tennis club started more than 10 years ago at UCSD; however, this year was the first that the members of the club organized and formed a team. As a rookie squad, the Tritons were not expected to do as well as they did in their maiden voyage, making it to the National Championships and becoming the fourth-best table tennis team in the country. However, a tie with the University of Southern California for first place in the Southern California Division gave them a wild-card berth to the championships and a trip to Texas.
Given the opportunity to play at a higher level, the Tritons did nothing but impress opponent after opponent with their incredible play. The team, made up of Derrick Poon, Tom Plaisted, Wallace Liu, Alan Nash and Ardi Banhiamad, who couldn’t make it to Texas, played well enough to get to the second round of play. They finished only behind the University of Maryland in their group, earning a spot alongside the Terrapins in the quarterfinals.
The sixth-seeded Tritons faced UC Berkeley, the fifth seed, in the quarterfinals and won a very close match, 3-2. The win put them up against the second seed, the University of Southern Mississippi, in the semifinal match. The team jumped out to a 2-0 lead after Plaisted and Poon beat their two best players in the first two games. The Tritons were within one game of the finals, but Southern Mississippi’s weaker players managed to beat Liu and Nash in the third and fourth games to tie the match up, 2-2.
With the match on the line, Southern Mississippi won the decisive doubles game to advance to the finals, leaving UCSD to play Maryland in the third-place match. The Terrapins, led by top U.S. Olympic and U.S. World team contender Han Xiao, pulled off a 3-1 win in the match, notching a third-place finish in the championship and dropping UCSD to fourth. However, a Final Four finish in a rookie season is nothing to be ashamed of.
“As a rookie team this year, our fourth-place finish in the Nationals put UCSD on the map of strong table tennis teams in U.S. collegiate table tennis,” Plaisted said.
Plaisted and the Tritons came home from Texas proud and excited about a table tennis team that could contend for a championship in the years to come. They are already recruiting for next year and hope to garner more interest in the sport.
“We’re always looking for new players, and we encourage any interested guys and girls to join us during our Wednesday night practices in RIMAC,” Plaisted said after the return from Texas.
The team was extremely proud of placing higher than USC and UC Berkeley, their main competition in California. Their fourth-place finish makes them the best team in California and the best team west of Texas, behind national champion Texas Wesleyan University.
