After winning regionals just a season ago, NC State’s club table tennis team looks to build off last year’s success and return to championship form after the departure of several key players.

Table tennis isn’t an up-and-coming phenomenon sweeping college campuses. Commonly know as Ping-Pong, the recreational sport is a flourishing competitive sport, as evidenced by the club team here at NC State.

Competing in the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association, the NC State club table tennis team competes in the Carolina division of the Mid-Atlantic Region, competing against other universities such as High Point, South Carolina, William & Mary, and archrival Duke. The team kicked off the 2014-2015 season by holding their first official practice of the year last Monday.

The club is divided into four teams: A, B, C and W, each consisting of four to six players. The veteran, more experienced players are on the A Team, and the younger, less experienced players are on the B and C teams. The women play on the club’s W Team.

Most of the players from last season’s A Team have graduated, including French national player and NC State standout Lucas Charpentier, or can’t play due to school policies. However, with the arrival of two new Chinese transfer students, club president and environmental design junior Jing Yuan is optimistic about the state of his current team and hopes to build off last season’s success.

“I’m hoping we can make it at least past regional, or at least past divisional,” Yuan said.

Besides winning regional and divisional, any season when State beats Duke in table tennis is considered a successful one.

Winning regionals last year and advancing to Nationals has Yuan, a three-year NC State Table Tennis veteran, excited about the upcoming season.

 “We’re still going to beat Duke every single time” Yuan said. “It’s basically all new players this year and I have high hopes of everyone being as good as we were in the past couple of years.”

Yuan believes last season’s deep run at Nationals has done wonders for the club table tennis team at NC State.

“We were only known locally, at least in the Triangle area, by local players,” Yuan said. “We only made a big impact outside of our local area [after Nationals] because we were able to beat other schools outside of North Carolina.”

The team plays four matches in a tournament that consist of one-on-one matchups. A team needs a minimum of four players to compete, but it’s smart to bring more than four players so a team can mix and match for that ideal match up when the coveted divisional, regional, or even national championship is on the line.

Yuan says the team hopes to host at least one or two local tournaments a month at State during the upcoming season. The mindset being so that the team is primed and prepped for the larger, more significant divisional and regional tournaments at the end of the season.

An official from the NCTTA has yet to contact Yuan about a schedule for the upcoming season, so for the time being the team can only wait and watch for what’s in store from the upcoming season.