The New York City region had its regional tournament on Sunday, November 16, at FIT in downtown Manhattan. The tournament itself was a huge success thanks to the quick, efficient set-up and clean-up before and after the tournament (props!), and because of the tournament's huge turn-out. Co-ed matches lasted from about 10am to after 7pm, and the women's matches lasted from about 10am to around 3pm. In both co-ed and women's, Rutgers dominated the scene by going undefeated in both events, so congratulations to the Rutgers' co-ed team: Judy Hugh, Adam Formal, Iuliana Radu, Wing "Leon" Sit, and Jin Yang; and to the Rutger's women's team: Judy Hugh, Iuliana Radu, Jin Yang, Rekha Bachwani, Shriya Patel, and Elizabeth Cho. On another bright note, Columbia's co-ed and women's teams both got 2nd behind Rutgers, losing only to Rutgers, so KUDOS to the Columbia co-ed team: Carlos A. Perilla, Victor Leung, David Loeffler, Vanck Zhu, Shih-Hung Hsu, James Skoufis, Kagan Irez, and me; and to the women's team: Lina Cao, Jenny Chen, Wendy Mu, Vivian Wang, Dehui Kong, and me!
This was the first of two regional tournaments (the next one will be in the spring), and the top two teams from each region get a bid to the College Nationals, being held in Minnesota this year. Although the tournament took basically all day and drained the hell out of everyone there, it was great to see old friends and meet new ones. Teams that went included Columbia, Yale, Stonybrook, Rutgers and NYU, [among others], and some matches got heated and intense; the best ones to watch throughout the day were probably NYU vs Stonybrook (or really NYU vs anyone, what with their energy level and team spirit, contributed mostly by Joe Kim) and Columbia vs Rutgers, with both ties going down to the wire: NYU and Rutgers both won in the 5th game of the 5th team match (the format of NCTTA tournaments are best 3 out of 5 team matches, with 4 singles and 1 doubles, so if you see tight doubles matches going on, chances are that the team tie is at stake).
I was silly and forgot my camera, so the following pictures are credited to Shih-Hung Hsu:
David Loeffler:
Judy vs Carlos:
Victor Leung:
