There is a sports dynasty in Fort Worth. It’s not football. It’s not basketball. It’s not baseball or softball, or even soccer.
And no college in the United States is better at it than Texas Wesleyan University.
Once again the Rams dominated the iSET College Table Tennis National Championships, held recently in Round Rock. They won national titles in the women’s team division, along with women’s singles, men’s doubles and women’s doubles.
It is only a rumor that Texas Wesleyan has more national table tennis championships than the school has students, though a glance at the trophy case could explain how the rumor got started.
Since Texas Wesleyan began playing table tennis in 2002, the program has won 69 national championships, including 13 in co-ed team, eight women’s team, 11 men’s singles, eight women’s singles, 11 men’s doubles, 10 women’s doubles, and eight mixed doubles titles. The program has NEVER failed to reach the finals of the co-ed team event.
If they could train a squirrel to swing a table tennis racquet, they’d win that too. In fact, don’t be surprised if that’s not in the works.
This year, sophomore Jennifer Yue Wu became the eighth Lady Ram to win a singles championship, and the first since Sara Hazinski in 2011. Wu defeated top-seeded Lily Zhang of the University of California in six sets.
Wu, an Olympian in 2016, was also recently chosen to represent the United States in the Table Tennis World Championships in Halmstad, Sweden, April 29-May 6. She is the sixth Ram to be a member of Team USA, joining Jasna Rather (now Wesleyan’s head coach), Eric Owens, Mark Hazinski, Yahao Zhang and Jim Butler.
The women’s doubles final was an all-Wesleyan affair in which Wu and graduate student Wenting Zha defeated teammates Ana Aleksandric, a freshman, and junior Edina Haracic, 3-0. The Lady Rams had three of the final four teams as sophomores Chen Wang and Tina Huynh reached the semis as well.
In men’s doubles, 2017 champion Zhe Feng, a graduate student, and 2016 champion Bruno Ventura Dos Anjos, a senior, teamed up to take the crown. Feng and Ventura Dos Anjos dropped the first set to NYU’s Adar Alguetti and Yijun Feng, but came back to win, 3-1, avenging a loss in the deciding doubles competition of the coed team competition.
The Lady Rams took their eighth team national championship by defeating Cal in the final. In the co-ed team event, fifth-seeded New York University, the Cinderella story of the tournament, topped the Rams 3-2 in the final.
“I often wonder how it is possible to have so many amazing people on our team and how lucky I was to recruit them,” said Rather, herself a former champion for the program who has coached the squad to 27 titles in her nine seasons at the helm.
“We have a mainly international team with athletes from very different cultures. We embrace that and make sure everyone feels welcome.”
And anyone who thinks table tennis doesn’t require as much athleticism as other sports hasn’t worked with Rather. The table may be small but the ball is moving at blinding speed, and the participants had better be in tip-top shape – and that includes academically.
“Texas Wesleyan table tennis athletes not only work hard in daily practice but in the classroom as well,” Rather said. “Their determination to represent Texas Wesleyan and bring home great results shows how much Wesleyan athletes care about the school and our program.”
They will never grab the headlines like even the most mediocre football team, but if you want to see some of the nation’s – even the world’s – best at their sport, they are at the small private college in East Fort Worth. As a matter of fact, an opportunity to see them is coming up May 5 as they will host the Texas Wesleyan Open table tennis tournament at the Sid Richardson Center.
