Frank wins table tennis tourney

Don’t let anyone tell junior Aron Frank that table tennis isn’t hard work.

Frank narrowly defeated Wen Huang in five sets to win the IU Table Tennis Club’s fall 2010 tournament Saturday. After losing the first two games of a best-of-five match, Frank staged a comeback and won the final three games.

“In the first two games, I just was not focused,” Frank said.

Down again in the third game, Frank switched his mental approach.

“I made a huge psychological switch to not think about the results, not think about anything. Just play and do the shots I’ve always done,”
Frank said.

Huang, the runner-up in the tournament, felt good about his performance in the first two games but said he made some mistakes that cost him in the long run.

“It was very close, but I could’ve done better if I could control just a couple points or a couple game points,” Huang said.

The final game point was nearly impossible to manage. With Frank leading 10-9 and needing 11 to win, he placed Huang’s serve on the top of the net, where it bounced and softly landed on Huang’s side. There was nothing Huang could do.

“It’s pure luck sometimes,” Frank said of his fluky shot.

The tournament started with a group stage from which five players advanced. From there, it was a single elimination bracket. In the consolation match, postdoctoral researcher Ran Zhou defeated graduate student Yu-Min Chung to claim third place.

Chung said he was impressed with the talent in the club.

While Zhou took third place in the tournament, his wife Yin Liu would likely have done better.

Liu, who is active in the IUTTC, didn’t participate in the tournament because she is an expectant mother. But Liu is known as one of the better players in the club. In fact, Zhou said she was the top-ranked player at Peking University. That’s saying something in a table tennis-crazed country like China.

“She beats me 11-0 easily. It’s hard to get one point,” Zhou said of his matches with Liu.

IUTTC president Mario Vieweger said he hopes to recruit new members of all skill levels this year. He also wants to keep them coming back.

“We’re trying to set something up where one or two of the skilled people are going to coach beginners and intermediate players so that they have incentive to show up for club time,” Vieweger said.

Amit Jindal, club vice president, noted that IUTTC is open to anyone in the area.

“We are not just students. We have graduate people, we have undergraduate people, people from the Bloomington society and IU staff. Everyone’s involved in this club,” Jindal said.

IUTTC has club practices on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week. Tryouts for the competitive student team will take place in October, according to its website. Any IU student in good standing can participate.