Texas Wesleyan University brought home the national title from the national table tennis tournament in Waukesha, Wis., April 9 to 11.
With three event wins, Wesleyan has won 41 of 59 possible titles during the last nine years and seven straight team national championships. The Rams entered this year’s tournament as the No. 2 seed.
“We knew it was going to be tough this year,” Head Coach Jasna Rather said. “The quality of the participating players has improved significantly across the board, and there were many new, very talented players.”
One of the players participating in her first national tournament was Wesleyan freshman Sara Hazinski.
“She did everything she could on her own,” Rather said.
Sara Hazinski was directly involved in all three of Wesleyan’s titles. She won women’s singles on her own, paired with her husband, Mark Hazinksi, to win the mixed doubles and brought the team back from a deficit in the final of the tournament’s main event, the coed team event.
“She played back-to-back and just kept delivering,” teammate William Rather said.
In the final, the Wesleyan team, consisting of Mark Hazinski, Ines Perhoc, Chance Friend and Sara Hazinski, was down 2-1 in matches against Lindenwood. Sara Hazinski kept the Rams alive with a win and paired up with Mark Hazinski to secure the national championship in a decisive double’s game.
“I definitely rank the team win highest,” she said.
Wesleyan also made it to the finals in three other events. Wesleyan fell 3-2 to Lindenwood in the women’s team event. Sara Hazinski and Tina Chen were defeated 3-1 by Lindenwood’s Livia Mizobuchi/Karin Fukushima in the women’s doubles final, and Mark Hazinski lost 11-9 to LaGuardia Community College’s YanJun Gao in a seven-game battle.
“I am very satisfied,” Mark Hazinski said. “I had my chances, but it was tough in the end.”
Despite a majority of the core returning next year, Rather is not taking anything for granted.
“More schools offer scholarships now,” she said. “Earlier, the trend was that many good players quit playing when going to college, but now when the competition is getting stronger, they tend to want to keep playing. I really did not expect us to win the team event, and I am very excited that we managed to win despite the tough competition.”
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