2009 Dixie Open Results
Apr 15th, 2009 • Category: Featured Story
If you weren’t in Hattiesburg at USM today to play Table Tennis, you missed it. The USM club held it’s annual spring tournament today at the Payne Center on the campus. Players from Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida made the trip to test their skills and prowess at the game.
We also had the tournaments top seed Tiger Ramakrishnan return back to Hattiesburg from Kentucky and attend the event. Tiger was a driving force in getting tournaments started at the Payne Center while he was at USM. We all wish he was back here permanently.
The Pensacola and Ft Walton Beach clubs brought 9 players into the tournament, more than anyone else including USM, the host club. In the Final Round Robin of the Championship Flight, 8 of the 10 players were from this group.
The Championship flight four semi finalists were Adam Maamoun, L.A. Johnston, Joe Mozur and Zhongyuan Huang. Joe beat Adam and Zhongyuan beat L.A. setting up the final between Zhongyuan Huang of Mississippi State University and Joe Mozur of Gulf Breeze Fla. Although Joe gave a valiant effort, Huang was too consistent with his very spinny low pushes and pulled ahead to win. In the first round robin earlier in the day, unrated Huang beat the tournament top seed Tiger Ramakrishnan and the other member of his round robin group to advance to the Championship flight.
In the B flight, the final was between Jonathan Campbell and Melvin Evans. Melvin’s vast years of experience were too much for Jonathan in the match. Jonathan, who is quickly improving had to settle for second place today. Jonathan was the only USM player to take home a trophy today.
Melvin wore a shirt that proclaimed I’m losing to win. I thought he was actually admitting to sandbaggin for the Nationals later, but it was just a tshirt about dieting.
The C Flight was an all Louisiana competition. It was decided by a round robin of 5 players competing. James Franklin came in first, with Ben Festervand coming in second.
The Junior Flight was also an all Louisiana affair. Players Grant Caldwell, and Scott Mayer took home trophies for first and second place.
We want to thank all the players who took the time to come and play with us, but especially the Florida group that helped so much to make this tournament a success. We hope to once again hold a USATT sanctioned event in the fall as well as a NCTTA college tournament. Thanks for coming!!!!!!
