An outside observer who stumbled into Andrews Dining Hall on Sunday afternoon and saw the carpet covered in orange and white pingpong balls may have surmised that a group of students was preparing early for Spring Weekend festivities. But with an overhand smash that sent his opponent lunging, Sunny Ahuja '09 soon made it clear that the facility was being used for a more constructive purpose.
While most students were fixated on March Madness or a weekend's worth of homework, the Brown club table tennis team turned the dimly lit confines of Andrews Dining Hall into a makeshift pingpong arena as it put in some final preparation before its inaugural visit to the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association championship competition at Ohio State University on March 29.
Brown will take its perfect 14-0 record to Columbus to compete against top teams from around the country in the round-robin, multi-day tournament consisting of 24 teams.
Despite its considerable success this year, the club will likely be playing the role of spoiler in Ohio. The New England division of the NCTTA is not known as one of the stronger national divisions, and Brown will be without its star player-coach, Bruno Bianchi GS, a visiting student who has finished his studies at Brown and returned home to Italy Tuesday. The team blossomed under Bianchi's leadership - last year's record was 3-9 - and players agreed the team will not be the same in his absence. Bianchi was 15-0 in singles play on the season, losing only four of 49 games in which he played.
Bianchi also managed to work pingpong into his academic work. He studied in the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, and a key part of his work was an experiment he conducted testing the relationship between pingpong and visual perception.
"Obviously we won't be the same without Bruno," said Captain Steven Chan '07. "He can pretty much crush everyone on our team."
Brown will face tough competition from national powerhouses such as Princeton and Texas Wesleyan University. Whereas Texas Wesleyan has four coaches and recruits top-ranked players, Brown practices on a carpeted surface (official matches take place on a hardwood surface), has only a few tables to train on and will be getting its first official uniforms in Ohio, courtesy of table tennis company Killerspin. Though the team recently received Category III status funding from the Undergraduate Council of Students, many of the club's costs are out-of-pocket expenses.
"We are pretty realistic about our expectations. I think we all just want to have fun but at the same time see if we can win a couple matches," Chan said.
Nevertheless, it has been a season of unparalleled success for the table tennis team, which started three years ago as a mostly informal venture. Chan founded the club during his freshman year with a friend. As the team has grown and become more successful, its organization has become more formalized.
This year, under Bianchi's guidance, the club instituted a formal training regimen - consisting partly of running around the tables - and began to incorporate a number of drills into its practices. Frequent practice matches with Bianchi also helped elevate several players' games, Chan said.
Team members said the table tennis club has provided them with a meaningful and enjoyable bonding experience.
"It is a serious league, but it is still a really enjoyable thing to do, and we have a great time," Chan said.
Team members said their experiences with the club have helped them connect to the Brown community. Seth Izen '08, who transferred to Brown this year from Williams College, said he missed the sport at Williams, where there is no club team. He started a team at his high school and was eager to begin competing formally again after arriving on College Hill.
Ahuja is from Thailand and is the team's highest-ranked player after Bianchi. He said participating on the club tennis team helped him transition to college life in America.
Four of the team's six members are international students. Shou Yi Poon '09 is from Singapore, and Bibek Karki '08 is from Nepal. Poon and Ahuja both played pingpong in high school and said high school matches in their home countries were extremely competitive and taken very seriously.
Ahuja said pingpong is one of the most popular sports in Thailand.
"In Thailand, table tennis is much more serious and formal than it is here. You can find a table tennis match on TV all of the time," he said.
Bianchi agreed. "The thing that pingpong can do is take a lot of different people from different countries, and they can all understand each other through the sport," he said.
Bianchi said he is disappointed he won't be able to be with the team for the national competition, but his time with the team has provided him with some of his best memories of his stay in the United States.
"I am really happy for the whole team," he said. "It was great to play with them this year, and I think it will be a great experience for them at the Nationals."
