ACUI stands for Association of College Unions International. It is an organization dedicated to promoting international comraderie through sport and games comeptitions. Each year, individual colleges within the 15 regions of the U.S. hold competitions in Table Tennis. Once the college champions are found, they progress to regional competitions. The top four men and women finishers in each region qualify to compete for the National Championship. The host college for the Nationals for the last two years has been the University of Houston. Torsten Pawlowski did an excellent job again as Tornament Director.
Of the 80 qualified competitors, 53 chose to compete for the titles this
year. Men's top seed Brian Pace (Region 6) had just recently played
in the US Team Trials. The top woman, Karen Chang led a formidable
team from Region 1. Last
years winner, Sean
Lonergan, did not defend his title. There were 7 Championship
titles at stake and 3 additional levels in the singles event, Master, Expert,
& Elite. Brian barely survived his first round. To his
surprise he found himself down 1 game and 10-2 in his best of 3 match with
Mike Bartl.
It took an amazing comeback on his part to move into the Championship Division.
The tournament was held in 2 venues in the University Center, the Houston Room (6 tables) and the Cougar Den (4 tables). The Men's and Women's winners both received a Newgy Robot as a prize for taking 1st place in the Championship Division. The event started Thursday night with a general meeting and a 5 hour practice session. It then went through 2 days of grueling competition and wrapped up Saturday night with the awards banquet.
Jeff Davis was instrumental in staging the event as USATT Vice President and ACUI National Table Tennis Coordinator. He was busily making notes during the event for the upcoming article for USATT magazine. The competitors had plenty of opportunnity for fun and comraderie. Brian also won the Overall Championship over Karen Chang 21-18, 21-14.
Brian Pace Overall Champion - Karen Chang 2nd Overall
| Men's Singles | Women's Singles | Men's Doubles | Women's Doubles | Mixed Doubles | |
| Championship | |||||
| 1st | Brian Pace | Karen Chang | David Roberts & Wie-Chong Gho | Suvarna Gandlur & Yanelys Guerra | Caroline Cheng & Idan Levi |
| 2nd | Srinivasan Ramanathan | Suvarna Gandlur | Richard Lee & Srinivasan Ramanathan | Karen Chang & Helen Huang | Suvarna Gandlur & Brian Pace |
| 3rd | Idan Levi | Magda Crespo | |||
| Master | |||||
| 1st | Reynaldo Sanabrio | Yanelys Guerra | Rafael Flores & Brian Pace | Tammy Caplin & Magda Crespo | |
| 2nd | Pratap Arangil | Rebecca West | Jens Hofmann & Michael Katsnelson | Roxane Hilton-Clarke & Rebecca West | |
| 3rd | Rafael Flores | Yih-Lin Cheng | |||
| Expert | Team Championships | ||||
| 1st | Rivera Barranco | Vivian Pong | 1st | Region 6 | |
| 2nd | Phong Ho | Navdeep Kathuria | 2nd | Region 1 | |
| 3rd | YuBei Teng | Kelly Comley | 3rd | Region 14 | |
| Elite | |||||
| 1st | Paul Bowman | Li Ming Liang | |||
| 2nd | David Hanna | Tianna Lee | |||
| 3rd | Mohamed Majid | Angela Lee |
Competitors in the 1999 ACUI Nationals
| Men | Women | ||
| Name | College/Region | Name | College/Region |
| Aaron Chung | Harvard / 1 | Karen Chang | Wellesley College / 1 |
| Peter Huang | MIT / 1 | Kelley Comley | Wellesley College / 1 |
| Yubei Teng | Babson College / 1 | Helen Huang | MIT / 1 |
| Alex Sukharsky | U of Mass. Amherst / 1 | Li Liang | Wellesley College / 1 |
| John O'Donnell | SUNY-Brockport / 2 | Roxanne Hilton-Clarke | Howard U. / 4 |
| Howard Chen | Syracuse U. / 2 | Rebecca West | Penn State / 4 |
| Momahmed Majid | FIT / 3 | LaToya Brown | NC Central U. / 5 |
| Richard Lee | Johns Hopkins / 4 | Navdeep Kathuria | William & Mary / 5 |
| Sanjay Ramachandran | Penn State / 4 | Tammy Caplin | U of Florida / 6 |
| Srinivasan Ramanthan | Penn State / 4 | Magda Crespo | FIT / 6 |
| Michael Katsnelson | Virginia Tech / 5 | Suvarna Gandlur | Georgia State / 6 |
| Rivera Barranca | U of Puerto Rico / 6 | Yanelys Guerra | Georgia State / 6 |
| Brian Pace | Broward College / 6 | Shova Mahat | St. Cloud State / 10 |
| Reynaldo Sanabria | U of Puerto Rico / 6 | Caroline Chen | U of Texas / 12 |
| Rafael Flores | Broward College / 6 | Tiana Lee | U of Texas / 12 |
| Paul Bowman Jr. | Shawnee State / 7 | Angela Lee | U of Texas / 12 |
| David Hanna | Wright State / 7 | Vivian Pong | U of Oregon / 14 |
| Michael Bartl | U of Wisconsin Mil / 8 | Yih-Lin Cheng | Stanford / 15 |
| Mathias Koeppen | U of Wisconsin Mad/ 8 | ||
| Pratap Arangil | Michigan Tech / 8 | ||
| Reiter Bernhard | U of Wisconsin Mad/ 8 | ||
| Jed Heuer | Minnesota State / 10 | ||
| Brian Monson | Minnesota State / 10 | ||
| Jens Hofmann | Kansas State / 11 | ||
| Idan Levi | Brookhaven / 12 | ||
| Toan Nguyen | U of Houston / 12 | ||
| Jason Zhao | U of Texas / 12 | ||
| Mustafa Ucozler | U of Arizona / 13 | ||
| Wie-Chong Gho | U of Washington / 14 | ||
| Phong Ho | Western Oregon U / 14 | ||
| David Roberts | U of Washington / 14 | ||
| Vineet Agarwal | Stanford / 15 | ||
Richard Lee places 4th in Men's Championship
