The UMass Boston Table Tennis Team met with some success at a recent tournament held in the Clark Athletic Center. Teams from Northeastern, Harvard, and BU, to name a few, came to UMass for the tournament that decided who would move on to the national tournament to be held at Texas Wesleyan University (TWU) from March 31to April 3.
Although the UMass team missed making the nationals by a mere two games, two standout players qualified for the singles tournament, also held at TWU. Eileen Lintz, senior chemistry major at UMass and co-founder/captain of the Table Tennis Club and team, will represent UMB in the women’s singles at the tournament, and Panos Nikopolitidis, the number-one-ranked player in the division, will represent the men.
The team’s success has not gone unnoticed around the Athletics Department. Rodney Hughes, UMB’s men’s basketball coach, remarked, “For a group that just started, to get to the nationals is outstanding. I don’t care whether they’re a club team or not.”
Hughes, along with Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs and former Athletics Director Charlie Titus were instrumental in the creation of the club, helping to acquire new Tennis Tables, securing the use of the Creative Room for practice, as well as scheduling the recent tournament.
The fact that UMass Boston has a team at all is an achievement in itself. Lintz notes, “We are the only public institution of higher education in the New England division, and I think that’s quite an accomplishment that in our first year we did so well against other better funded schools.”
The team’s success is largely due to the play of their two standouts Nikopolitidis and Lintz, who will be paying their own way to Texas due to a lack of funds-one of the drawbacks of a publicly funded university.
Nikopolitidis, who played semi-professionally in Greece, has yet to lose a match, and Lintz is the number-one-ranked player in the New England women’s singles division.
The team consists of eight members who are also members of the club. Practice is held in the Creative Room in the Clark Athletics Center on Friday afternoons at 2:30. Lintz notes, “We usually draw about ten to twenty people each week, which is pretty good for a Friday afternoon. And it’s open to everyone-students, staff, and faculty.”
About 35 players with all ranges of skill attend the practices and club meetings. The team is formed through the club meetings and those showing promise and interest in playing competitively can join. “This is really a testament to UMass when you see how well this club has flourished here,” Lintz says of students’ involvement so far.
The Table Tennis Club started modestly, with Lintz and others playing on a broken down table above the Clark Athletics Center lobby. They then began posting flyers and spreading the word and the club soon grew too large for one table.
“Charlie Titus was very helpful and supportive…[He] saw that I was attracting a lot of members…he approved the purchase of four tables and some equipment…and my coach donated a table so now we have five tables,” says Lintz. The strong interest also led to using the larger Creative Room to accommodate the burgeoning club.
Lintz is graduating this year and heading for graduate school in Germany where, unlike the United States, they have a professional table tennis league. Lintz hopes the club will continue to grow in her absence. Interim Director of Athletics Pat Burns states, “The athletic department hopes to continue its relationship with the Tennis Table Club as long as it exists.”
With the success of the first year, all parties involved are hopeful for the future and look forward to both the national tournament’s results and next season’s tournaments.