Yale-NUS Table Tennis team emerge as Champions

Yale-NUS Table Tennis Team with Associate Director and Senior Executive, Campus Life from the Yale-NUS Athletics and Recreation team, Andy Loe and Marilyn Tan at the NYUAD Fall Racquet Tournament 2022. Image provided by Andy Loe.

The Yale-NUS Table Tennis Team participated in the NYUAD Fall Racquet Tournament hosted by New York University Abu Dhabi from 24 to 25 September, clinching the Overall Team Champion award. This is the first overseas athletics programme since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The team played well in both the team and individual categories, with Jane Lee (Class of 2023) and Genessa Chew (Class of 2022) clinching the 1st and 2nd places in the Women’s category and Mark Tan (Class of 2025) winning the 3rd place in the Men’s category.

The overseas athletics exchange programme is part of the College’s efforts to broaden the breadth of experiences for student-athletes. Fall Racquet Tournament provided ample opportunities for the team to develop their table tennis skills while interacting with the students of NYUAD and Heriot-Watt University Dubai through guided campus tours and a training session with the Heriot-Watt University table tennis team.

The Yale-NUS table tennis team with wide smiles outside NYUAD. Image provided by Tan Yock Han (Class of 2025).

Table Tennis Captain Tan Yock Han (Class of 2025) shared what drove the team of seven to participate in the competition, including the desire to build upon the skills they had gained at the local level competing in the NUS Inter-Faculty Games and Inter College Games by testing their mettle on an international arena. In representing Yale-NUS College, they also hoped to create cross-cultural ties with students from the Middle Eastern university, who were also present at the tournament games, through a shared love for the sport.

Yock Han and his teammates are grateful that the trip provided them with valuable insights into different training regimes and competition atmospheres, offering a change of pace from the Singaporean style of playing that the team was accustomed to. “Many of our opponents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi had strikingly different styles of play, forcing us to learn to adapt to their tempos, strokes and strategies. These lessons will prove invaluable when we compete in future tournaments by allowing us to be both versatile in our style as well as adaptive to others”, shared Yock Han. “These cross-cultural experiences from our exposure to different institutes of higher learning and everyday local culture in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have definitely enriched our worldview and broadened our horizons.” Having been on hiatus since 2020, the ability to attend international competitions is a hopeful sign that more sports teams will be able to attend competitions abroad and gain similar experiences therein.

The College’s commitment to building cultural relations through non-academic avenues remains strong, and the team was especially thankful to the Athletics and Recreation Team, headed by Associate Director Andy Loe, for the support provided in securing this opportunity as well as their general focus on ensuring a high quality of training and access to facilities for our student athletes to excel, both abroad and at home.