By Jen Nelson
The athletes ran laps, stretched and jumped up and down to loosen up before the beginning of their matches. As the tournament began, players stood poised and ready to face their opponents.
This, however, was not an average track meet or football game. This was the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association’s (NCTTA) New England regional tournament.
Northeastern’s Table Tennis team headed to the Malkin Athletic Center at Harvard University to face the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and Wesleyan College on Saturday.
The team had been inactive for several years before middler business major Dennis Coppola restarted the team in October 2002.
“In high school I loved the game,” Coppola said. “It’s an underrated sport. In a few years, it’s going to get a whole lot more popular.”
The team has received four new ping-pong tables in the past two years from the Budget Review Committee (BRC). The team travels to Framingham once a week to practice at the YMCA, paying their own travel expenses.
Teammates that attended the tournament Saturday included top player Maaza Mekuria, a graduate engineering major, Sanjin Osmancevic, a middler electrical engineering major and Antoine Guerin, a senior international business major.
The popularity of table tennis overseas shows through on Northeastern’s team. Coppola is the only American, with Guerin hailing from France, Mekuria from Ethiopia and Osmancevic from Bosnia.
Each player had his own strategy going into the first match against undefeated MIT.
“I play close to the table and fast,” said Mekuria, who has been playing since the age of nine.
Speed and agility are necessary in the more professional table tennis competitions.
“You have to be physically fit,” Osmancevic said. “There’s a lot to it. A lot of skill is involved.”
Each player competes in five matches against a player of the opposing team. A match goes to 11 points, and the best out of five matches wins the round.
A key strategy in winning matches is mentally beating the opponent, Guerin said.
“When you feel good, you score a lot of points,” he said. “[Table tennis] is very good training to concentrate and to focus.”
The team defeated MIT in the first round, but later fell to both Wesleyan and Harvard, going 1-2 in the tournament.
NU also competed in the Association of College Union International (ACUI), which took place in the Curry Student Center Ballroom on Sunday. This tournament pitted teammate against teammate with every man for himself.
The tournament ended with Mekuria as the winner, defeating Hanloog Ma of Boston University in the final round.
“It was a good tournament, very tough,” Coppola said. “Maaza hasn’t played in awhile, and he’s just now getting back into it, and I think he could do some damage.”
Mekuria will compete in the ACUI national tournament in City Beach, Calif. in April.
