Bay Area Blasters and Portland Paddlers Dominate Day 1 Action in Lone Star State
The Dancing Coach strikes again! Portland’s Coach Christian Lillieroos breaks out his Dancing with the Stars-worthy moves once again, after the Paddler’s convincing 17-4 win over home team Texas.
October 27, 2023. With the Seattle Spinners’ top gun Nikhil Kumar inexplicably watching from the sidelines, the Bay Area Blasters took advantage and rolled Seattle from the tipoff. Jedi Master Tao Wenzhang schooled padawan Aditya Sareen 3-0 and the rout was on. Alexis Douin of France made a successful MLTT debut with an impressive 2-1 victory over Andrew Cao, and despite a temporary shift in momentum when Olajide Omotayo and Fabiola Diaz fought for a tough 2-1 win over Tao and Angie Tan, newly acquired Senura Silva righted the ship with a 2-1 victory over Ondrej Lapcik, and fan favorite Lashin “The Pharaoh” Elsayed won the Battle of Africa over Omotayo, 2-1. With a 5 point lead going into the Golden Game, Bay Area did not relent and ran off a 21-13 win to secure the final 16-5 team win.
In the late game, the Portland Paddlers similarly jumped out to a big lead with the mighty Kou Lei renewing his MLTT dominance with a 3-0 win over Texas Smash’s David McBeath. He would later team up with free agent lefty Kayla Goodwin to take a hard-fought 2-1 doubles victory over McBeath and a very composed Emily Wang (who probably returned Kou Lei’s serves as well as anyone to date in this young season). Smooth lefty Daniel Tran made an aesthetically pleasing MLTT debut with a 3-0 win over free agent Aaron Wang, and then Jiwei closed out the team tie with a 2-1 win over Darryl Tsao. Even though the W was already secured, the GG obviously still offered Texas a chance to pull off a virtual tie in terms of team points, but it was not to be as again Kou Lei (5-1 vs Yoan Rebetez) and Tran (4-0 vs Emily) led the way to an easy 21-7 GG win and a big 17-4 team win to catapult them ahead of the pack in the over team standing. And then the dancing began…as in the unforgettable words of Kenny Loggins: “Everybody get footloose, footloose, dance like Coach Lillieroos!”
Tune in today at 4pm (5pm eastern) to watch as Seattle reloads with Kumar and Texas attempts to reclaim home turf! And if you’re anywhere in the area, join the growing MLTT crowd to watch the action in-person, there’s nothing like LIVE table tennis…tickets available this weekend’s sessions here.
Keep pongin’, Pongheads!
