Top Three Teams Undefeated on First Day of Competition
BY BARBARA WEI
“LYTTC Elite” (Ruichao Chen, Kaden Xu, Yuxiang Jin, Ziyang Chen, Junha Wu), “Newgy/Petrosetco” (Sameh Awadallah, My Trang Mai, Rachid El Boubou, Sameir Mohammad Elfeky) and “SPiN” (Kevin Wang, De Tran, Tahl Leibovitz, Paul David, Anthony Valero) remain undefeated after the first three rounds of Division 1 play on Friday. Combined, these three teams only dropped 4 matches to teams from the bottom half of their division. These top three contenders for the $3000 grand prize will face each other on the final day of competition (Sunday, November 27).

One team, so far, in Division 1 has pulled off an upset. “Solid Forehands” (Seth Pech, Alex Averin, Roger Liu, Lester Lee) seeded sixth and hailing from the American Midwest has beaten fourth seed “LYTTC-New Zealand” (Barry Dattel, Matt Hetherington, Roger Rao, May Tong, Cory Eider) 5 matches to 3. This puts “Solid Forehands” in good position for clinching the fourth place finish (and $850 in prize money) with only one loss so far to third ranked team “SPiN.” Continued success for “Solid Forehands” against lower ranked Division 1 teams will be necessary to hold onto their current fourth place position.

Upsets abounded in Divisions 2-6, where every division had at least 2-3 upsets on the first day of competition. “Haydon’s Magnificent Team” (Haydon Lee, Billy Joe, Wesley Fan) remains undefeated in Division 2 while “LYTTC Boys 2” (Thomas Benson, Michael Zhang, Timmy Chen, Jayesh Mistry) holds onto their perfect record in Division 4. Division 6 has 3 undefeated teams (“LYTTC Juniors 2”, “Princeton Pong Stars”, “LYTTC Girls U-11”). With prizes given for only the top 2 places in Divisions 2-6, teams will need to finish strong over the next two days of play to secure top honors.

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.