Table Tennis: Princeton's paddle proficiency

The Princeton University Table Tennis Club (PUTTC) has perhaps earned the distinction of being the nation’s most successful and highly ranked collegiate sports team among those that receive the least attention and fanfare. Led by junior club president Eric Finkelstein, the team placed second at the collegiate national championship three out of the past four years and earned fourth place this past season despite losing its top player, senior Adam Hugh, to injury. Hugh has placed second in the men’s singles tournament multiple times and won the men’s doubles and mixed doubles championships last year.

The team’s success is by no means a fluke. Princeton’s table tennis team plays in the Mid-Atlantic Division, one of the strongest divisions in the nation. As the team faces regular-season competition against a number of perennial contenders — Maryland, Penn State, Johns Hopkins and Penn — Princeton often may not be expected to emerge as the consensus favorite in division play. Still, the Tigers have only lost one game in division play since 2005 and have won the division for four consecutive years in a seemingly effortless manner.

How exactly did a team become so good in such an under-the-radar manner?

The story begins with a man named David Zhuang.

A professional table tennis player since the age of 12, Zhuang moved from China to the United States in 1990 and became one of the nation’s top players. A six-time U.S. men’s singles champion and a 14-time champion in doubles competition, Zhuang has also represented the United States in the Olympics in three occasions, including last summer’s Summer Olympics in Beijing.

This tale, however, does not focus on the play of Zhuang himself, but on that of his students. A West Windsor resident, Zhuang has coached at the New Jersey Table Tennis Club for more than a decade. The link between his students and Princeton University was nonexistent until five years ago, when Pan Lin ’08 was accepted to the University.

“It pretty much all started with Pan,” sophomore club treasurer George Xing said. “He was the first of my coach’s students to get into Princeton. I’m not sure how they did that year at nationals, but I think Pan was the school’s first really good player. Then Adam Hugh got in. Then Eric, who also happens to be from my high school, came. After Eric got in, I thought I might as well apply too. And that same year, [sophomore] Alden Fan applied and was accepted as well.”

The elite tournament circuit of high school table tennis seems to have united the current members of the PUTTC even before they stepped onto the Princeton campus.

All the members seem to have played with or against one another at one point in their years of competition and have heard the glories of their opponents lauded by many in the circuit.

“I kind of take it for granted now that we’ve all known each other for so long and pretty much grew up playing together,” Finkelstein said. “I’ve known George since I was 13 and Alden from a few years earlier. There’s a picture of me and Alden together at the 1999 Junior Olympics. I met Adam 12 years ago when his mom was teaching table tennis clinics five minutes from my house.”

“Me and [Thomas An], who’s coming here next year, used to hit together all the time. I used to spot him 10 points in games to 11 and still win,” Finkelstein added jokingly. “Now we’re at about the same level.”

With only a handful of students at a time and only one or two high school seniors each year, Zhuang’s coaching can hardly be viewed as a mass production process that feeds the University’s elite table tennis club.

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It seems that Princeton’s dominance in table tennis gives the Tigers one Ivy League sport that they can count on for a victory.

The most recent list of Princeton acceptances among Zhuang’s students include freshman Taiyee Chien and An, a soon-to-be Tiger.

“With Tommy, David Zhuang is six-for-six now for his students getting into Princeton,” Finkelstein noted.

In addition to all of Zhuang’s students, the team also includes sophomore vice president Sarah Zheng, one of the top female players in the country. The caliber of this elite squad is demonstrated by the fact that every single player on the team — Hugh, Finkelstein, Xing, Fan, Zheng, Lin, Chien and An — has won a Junior Olympics event at some point in time.

“Altogether, there’s at most 50 juniors at our competition level around the nation, and we’ve managed to maintain a good five of six of those at any given year here at Princeton,” Xing said. “A significant portion of the rest of those players are concentrated at the elite schools that recruit for the sport.”

While the team has tremendous talent, the players have had to rely heavily on alumni for financial support for its small budget.

“It’s mostly because of the generous matching donation pledges of Ron Lee ’80 as well as our faculty adviser Volker Schroder’s donations that we’ve been able to go to nationals,” Finkelstein said. “Last year it cost us $3,500 to go, and the championship fund we got was $1,250.”

The group has had success in fundraising from old team members.

“We had a pretty successful alumni drive last year and raised about $3,000, but we had to burn through all but $600 of it just to go to nationals to compete,” Finkelstein said. “We had another fundraising drive this year that raised $2,500, but it’s just discouraging to keep asking [our alumni] for more.”

Two weeks ago, the team could only afford to send four players to the national championship in Rochester, Minn.

Princeton’s successes are all the more impressive considering that the table tennis programs at Texas Wesleyan, Lindenwood and the University of Puerto Rico dedicate upwards of $50,000 for the team’s annual expenses and offer scholarships to top international players.

“Several schools even have fully funded varsity programs for the table tennis teams!” graduate student Anton Koychev said in an e-mail. “And on top of that, almost all of the other teams get their expenses fully covered, and they are able to bring squads of five or six or more players, which means they have a lot more flexibility in adjusting the player position for each tie, which can be a big advantage.”

Players also expressed concern that athletic departments at Columbia and Rutgers provide funding for coaches.

“I’m sure we could definitely do more to publicize and raise money, but what is it exactly we should do to get publicity?” Finkelstein said. “The results should say enough itself.”

But as the team works through low visibility and little cash, two things remain certain: Princeton University table tennis will keep on winning, and that tireless ping pong ball on the second floor of Dillon will keep on bouncing.