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August 7, 2008

24th Taiwanese and Chinese American Athletic Tournament

By Ben Azadeh On Saturday, June 14 2008, the 24th Taiwanese and Chinese American Athletic Tournament of San Francisco Bay Area was held at Tri-Valley Table Tennis Club (TVTTC). Tri-Valley TTC was one of the sponsors of this tournament, as well. Annie Li was the Tournament Director.

The Tournament started, as scheduled on the Saturday morning. The Tournament was held at the Pleasanton Middle School Gym, where the club meets on Friday and Saturday nights. The setting was superb. A new gym, with great lighting, high ceiling and accommodation for audience greeted the players. There were a total of 12 Butterfly's Centreford 25 sky rollaway new tables, with 8 other standard table, plus most of Butterfly's Barriers, with standard tournament USATT and International Tournament regulation settings.

A total of 23 events were held, starting from Boys and Girls Under ten, and up to seniors over 60 years old. There were many exciting games, having many high ranking players attending these events from all over California as well as other states, and a few guests from China.

The tournament started with younger-age events and continued throughout the day till late night, ending with all Open Event semifinal and finals. There were a total of six cash prizes for Open and Team Singles; trophies, medals, gift certificates and gifts for other events total price and gift value over$4,000.00. Each player who entered the tournament also received a pack of gifts. The awards were handed to players, as each event finished.

The main event was Adult team, Junior Team event and of course the Open men and women single and Doubles, which do not have any age or ranking limitations, and anyone, could enter the event. Adult and Junior Teams started in the early morning at 9:00 in the morning. Open events started in mid-afternoon and lasted till 8:30 PM. All the games were very exciting, since the open men singles semi final and final average ratings was from 2300 to 2550 or higher.

The open Single semifinals started with Wu Wei playing against Halong Shen, and then the Single finals was between Steven Wang and Freddie Gabriel. The game went to its final set, with each player having three sets in their favor. Both players were playing superb, and unbelievable. The audiences were on their feet and cheering, after each point. They were easily playing at US Championship level. It got even more exciting when the final game went into several extra-point matches, after they tied. It was finally with a brilliant attack, that Steven Wang got ahead, and his service started a sequence of back and forth loops, ending to his favor. Steven Wang took away the Championship.

In the Open Double Finals, Peter Zaiac & Freddie Gabriel's team played against Wu Wei and Peter Chen, It was an exciting game, in which Peter and Freddie controlled the game from the beginning, dominated the last set, and won the championship.

Special thanks to Butterfly Table Tennis Co. for gift certificate donations, calendars and notebook calendar items. Without your support we wouldn't have this successful tournament, also Thanks to volunteers from Chinese cultural center, Taiwanese & Chinese American Tournament team, and the Tri-Valley Table Tennis Club's member to Sponsoring this event. Our gratitude to the City of Pleasanton, for creating such an opportunity for people of Pleasanton, and many bay area neighbor-city residents, who enjoy this growing recreational sport.

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