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Bemer Plus 1999 Sunbelt Teams Championships
Sept. 18, 1999

With the generous sponsorship of Bemer Plus (a top Houston luxury car dealership), the Houston Table Tennis Center played host to this years regional team tournament.  Finishing first in the A division was the "Acorn Press" team of Viktor Subonj, Huan Nguyen, & Roxanna Subonj. Second place went to the "Misfits" team of Razvan Cretu, Kazuhiro Ohara, Idan Levi, & Sam Smith.

Additional top teams included:
"New Orleans" with Randy Cohen, John Beaumont, & Sam Wang
"Bemer Plus" with Roberto Byles, Hector Bennet, & Carrie Bodden
"Orillion" with Taju Oshodi, Thang (Bob) Lu, and Peggy Rosen
"Lethal Matrix" with Aaron Struth, Howard Lamb, & Randy Medcalf
Winning the B Division was the "Beg Tets" team (Simon Edlund, Ivan Amaya, & Cyril Agbontaen).  The C's were won byteam "MR²" (Richard Howell, Rene Rizk, Martin Sebbowiak)

The format of play is a best of 7 matches.  The first 6 matches are singles.  Then if necessary, the 7th and deciding match is doubles.  The first team to win 4 is awarded the team tie.  Additional matches need not be played.  The players can choose to play these matches if they want, but this rarely happened.  Additionally, if a match is in progress, and the tie is determined by play on another table, the players can choose to abandon the match still in play.  However, if either of the players want to keep playing, the match must be completed, and the results counted for ratings.  This prevents a player from stalling so that he might abandon a bad outing.  Play was in a dual round robin format.  The first round robin seeded the players into the A's, B's, and C's.  The top four teams were automatically seeded into the A's, thus avoiding the prelims.  Following the divisional round robin, final placements were determined by cross over play among all of the 16 teams.  Each team could only have one player playing that was over 2250 in USATT rating.

This tournament marked the first events for two recently moved top players. Razvan Cretu (2544), formerly of New Orleans, has moved to Dallas, while Randy Cohen (2500), has moved down to New Orleans.  It also saw the first tournament play in 4 years for former US team member Peggy Rosen.  Featured were 4 of the top 30 male players in the country.  The matches reflected this tightly bunched high level play.  Cohen and Oshodi brought the crowd to there feet with cheers after an exceptional point late in the third that featured both players taking out barriers while continuing to exchang topspin loops from 20 feet off of the table. Randy eventually took the match at 18 in the third.  Oshodi's team featuring Peggy in the #3 spot and Bob in #2, could just not get over the top.

Cohen also had a battle with Subonj.  Also a 3 gamer, Viktor defended his home turf pulling away at 10 in the third.  The finals featured the top two rated players Cretu and Subonj.  Cretu took this confrontation winning 22-20 and 21-19.  "I thought I had the first game", said Viktor later on.  "In the second, I was down 20-19 and serving.  I said to myself, I have to serve short and loop the return.  I lost control of the toss.  The serve went long and Razvan looped it by me for the match winner.  There was nothing I could do about it.  He played well"  Despite the loss, Viktor's team had enough guns to overpower Cretu's and take the title 4 matches to 2.  Roxanna was a key to their victory.

Roberto Byles was determined to convert his game to a pure chopping one.  His game style change did not fair well here.  He dropped upset matches to Aaron Struth, Howard Lamb, and Sam Smith.  The latter costing his team a shot to move on to the finals. Howard's team also failed to advance past the folks from Dallas.  Idan Levi, who was swapped in and out of Razvan's "Misfits", ended up having a fine event.  Levi took out Lawrence Clarke and Hieu Troung on the way.

The B and C divisions also featured quality play and players. Hieu Truong up from Galveston headed the "Islanders".  The Austin club sent 5 teams!  "Zoned In" led the group with Ken Beauchamp.  John Dorn had an exceptional tournament leading "The Snowballs".  Last tournament's runner-up, Randy Medcalf, had a tough event.  His most disappointing loss was to 1855 rated Ivan Amaya.

Trophies were marvelous and presented by Fred Stewart the owner of Bemer Plus.  He and Roberto (who doubled as the Tournament Referee) put together one of the most fun events Houston has yet scene.  Robert Mayer again working as Tournament Director, managed an excellent time schedule that kept the players happy and the tables busy!  We certainly hope this will become a long lasting relationship between the HTTC, Bemer Plus, the players and officials.

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