(by Steve Hopkins)
The 2026 US Junior National Ranking Tournament II wrapped up last week at HITTA in Katy, Texas. The event ran five days from April 10-14 bringing great junior players from all over the country. The event included age tiers of U11, U13, U15, U17, and U19 with athletes battling through round-robin pools and knockout brackets to earn valuable points toward National Standings. At this age, players are sharpening abilities and testing strategy and stamina and the build the necessary tools to separate from the pack of talented, young players developing in the US.
The U19 Boys division had a surprise winner as the fifth seed, Anav Gupta, finished first. Anav’s 6-1 record bested Daniel Tran’s 5-2 second place finish, Darryl Tsao’s 5-2 third place finish, and Andrew Cao’s 4-3 fourth place finish. There was also a surprise in the U19 Girls event as the fifth seed Hildy Chen finished second. The other top seeds came through in order with top seed Lilian Ma finishing first, and then Satya Aspathi, Tashiya Piyadasa, and Isabells Luo finishing in positions 3-5 behind them.
Seeds 3 and 4 topped the U17 Boys event with Charles Shen defeating Tanish Pendse 3-1 in the Final. The third place finisher was Ryan Lin and William Feng finished fourth. Dariah Feng won the Girls U17 event with a 3-0 win over Mandy Yu. Anya Shanbhag finished third and Yudi Jin finished fourth.
Carlough Francis of Walpole, MA was the surprise winner of U15 boys. In fact, the top three finishers were all surprises with the sixth seed winning, fourth seed coming in second, and fifth seed finishing third (Carlough Francis, Chirag Pradhan, and Lucas Wu, respectively) and Stephen Lu finished fourth. Tiana Piyadasa was undefeated in Girls U15. Abigail Yu finished second with a 6-1 record, Isabella Luo finished third with a 5-2 record, and Elysia Huang was fourth at 4-3.
Chirag Pradhand finished 7-0 to win U13 Boys with Saivaishnav Senthilkumar in second, Ethan Zhou in third, and Jacob Kordus in fourth. The Girls U13 went by seed through three spots with Anya Shanbhag, Emma Yang, and Shreya Venkateraman finishing 1-3. The surprise was the eight seeded Julia Zhu who finished fourth.
Allen Mao and William Jin were the top two seeds in Boys U11 and the finished 1-2 as expected (7-0 and 6-1, respectively). Third went to Leo Shao who finished 4-3, and fourth to Aaron Li who finished 3-4. The fifth seed in Girls U11 finished 6-1 to win the group. Mia Yang fell short with the same record, but had to settle for second. Shreya Srinivasan finished third and Mira Shanbhag finished fourth.
We’ll be watching these juniors closely as they gear up for the next ranking tournament and the bigger events ahead. The future of American table tennis is in very good hands.
Full detailed brackets and results are available on Stadium.
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