“LYTTC Elite” Lead in Seedings for 2016 Butterfly Team Championships

“LYTTC Elite” Lead in Seedings for 2016 Butterfly Team Championships
By Barbara Wei

Opening day of the 2016 Butterfly Teams Championships brought intense table tennis action to the Legacy Youth Tennis and Education Center (6 miles from downtown Philadelphia) as 60 teams battled for top prizes in six divisions. “LYTTC Elite” led by LYTTC player-coaches Ruichao Chen (2706), Kaden Xu (2682) and Yuxiang Jin (2532) are heavy favorites for Division 1. Challenging this heavy weight team is “Newgy/Petrosetco” led by Sameh Awadallah (2515) with his amazing backhand play and newcomer Sameir Mohammad Elfeky (est. 2600). “SPiN” ranked third also poses a threat to heavy favorites “LYTTC Elite” with three players over 2400 including 2016 Rio Paralympian Tahl Leibovitz (2432). These top three teams will face each other on the final day of play (Sunday, November 27th).

The first day of competition at the 2016 Butterfly Teams championship began at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, November 25th with three rounds of divisional play. Based on initial ranking, top teams in each division faced teams in the bottom half of the division. With prizes given out for the top two teams in each division (except Division 1 where prize money extends to 6th place), highly ranked teams will need to hold onto wins today in order to stay in the running for prizes over the next two days of competition.

Intense competition continues on Saturday where teams will face off in 4 additional rounds of divisional play at 9 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM and 6 PM. By the end of day two, with 7 of the 9 rounds complete, divisional leaders will be made apparent and final team face-offs will be determined.

Continual coverage of the 2016 Butterfly Teams Tournament and stories about the athletes will be available at ButterflyOnline.com, or via Butterfly North America’s Twitter and Facebook pages.  For articles, results, photos and live stream click here.