Future Olympians Gather at the Westchester Table Tennis Center for the 2025 USA Table Tennis Junior Ranking Tournament

by Warren Rosenberg, MetroSports Magazine - February 18, 2025

Over 200 competitive Table Tennis players gathered at the Westchester Table Tennis Center in Pleasantville, NY, for the USA Table Tennis 2025 Junior National Ranking Tournament. The tournament, taking place over the five days between February 13-17, constitutes part of the process for selecting the USA Junior National Team. Among those competing will certainly be future U.S. Olympic Team athletes in the sport of Table Tennis as were U.S. Olympians Amy Wang, Rachel Sung and Irene Yeoh before them.

Above: Krish Gandhi - Overall Ranked #2 Junior National Team

U.S.A. Table Tennis, the governing body for Table Tennis in the United States, maintains a national ranking system, and oversees the U.S. National Teams. The Westchester Table Tennis Center (WTTC), received the USA Table Tennis 2024 Gold Medal Award recognizing it for achieving the highest overall ranking on the USATT Club Leaderboard. Located in the Westchester County municipality of Pleasantville, the WTTC has been operating since 2011 and has hosted numerous national and international tournaments at both the amateur and professional levels which have been previously covered in MetroSports Magazine.

Above: Kayla Goodwin, Overall #4 Ranked Junior National Team

Several Olympic team members from different countries have competed at the WTTC including Team USA members Jimmy Butler, Juan Liu,  Zhiwen He, Lilly Zhang, Kanak Jha, Rachel Sung, and Lily Zhang and, from other nations, Zeina Rashid (Jordan), Robert Gardos (Austria), Zoran Primorac (Croatia), Kokou Fanny (Togo) among others.

Competing for their spot on the U.S. Junior National Table Tennis Team were athletes ranging in age from under 11 (U11) to under 19 (U19) years of age and included both boys and girls competitions. Many players competed in more than one age category such as Lexie Yang competing in both the U11 and U13 girls division and Krish Gandhi competing in both the U17 and U19 boys divisions.

Above: Victor Xie #1 Ranked U19 Boys Competitor at the Ranking Tournament; Below: Tashia Piyadasa, #1 Ranked U17 Grirls Competitor at the Ranking Tournament and #1 Ranked Overall U15 Girl

The competition was structured as a progressive elimination where each competitor played a minimum of 4 matches with each match being a best-of-five system.

Final results of the USA Table Tennis Ranking Tournament 1 can be found at https://www.usatt.org/2025-junior-national-ranking-tournament-i

And the current overall Junior National Team Rankings can be found at https://www.usatt.org/junior-rankings