Nothing can alter the fortunes of a Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) team quite like the MLTT Draft.
Season 3’s fourth-overall pick, Cho Seungmin (SPINDEX: 2815), led the Princeton Revolution to the playoffs the very next year. The 20th overall pick in that same draft, Chen Sun (2627), brought the Carolina Gold Rush to their second consecutive Championship Match. That Gold Rush team lost that match to the Portland Paddlers, whose selections of picks Min Hyeok Kim (2735) and Kang Dong-Soo (2788) that year helped Portland finish with the best record in MLTT history.
All three of these teams looked very different before drafting these players. Princeton missed the postseason that year. Portland had never made it to the postseason before. The Gold Rush won the MLTT Cup in Season 2, but they lost many of the players who brought them there just a few short months later. These three teams proved this year that drafting well can not only change a roster but also the trajectory of an entire team.
Every team wants to have that groundbreaking season next year, especially if it ends with an MLTT Cup in their hands. That can’t happen without using the Season 4 MLTT Draft to build upon what worked and change what didn’t work. Some teams answered massive questions. Others filled some gaping holes. All 10 MLTT teams made at least one change to their roster on Thursday, hoping to move toward an MLTT Cup, but only one can end Season 4 as MLTT champions.
We won’t know which team will win MLTT's next title until the end of next season. But three teams had drafts that spoke volumes about how they aim to accomplish that goal.
What would the Atlanta Blazers do with the No. 1 pick in the Season 4 MLTT Draft? They had no shortage of options. They could have picked South Korean superstar An Jaehyun, whose estimated SPINDEX rating of 2900 would make him the best player in all of MLTT. They could have chosen nine-time ITTF Africa Cup winner Omar Assar, one of the most successful players to ever come out of Africa. They could have even taken veterans Takuya Jin and Antoine Hachard, adding them to a roster full of stars such as Yuya Oshima (2779) and Kayama Yu (2804).
Blazers head coach Koji Itagaki had a different player in mind: Quadri Aruna. The three-time Olympian and five-time African Cup winner was worthy of the top pick, but what made him stand out to Itagaki? His availability. The Blazers finished Season 3 with the second-lowest winning percentage in all of MLTT. That made their need for an anchor who could play as often as possible very important. Aruna confirmed to Itagaki his plans to compete in all 18 of the Blazers’ matches, which was enough of a tiebreaker to make Aruna the face of the Blazers.
And with that, Aruna became the first pick of the Season 4 MLTT Draft, as well as the first of Itagaki’s MLTT career. The Nigerian superstar will lead the Blazers throughout Itagaki’s first season with the team, but the new skipper didn’t make this pick alone. He consulted former Blazers coach Suzi Battison before the MLTT Draft, who advised him to select Aruna.
"That's what we had discussed, me and [Itagaki]," Battison said. "Every pick we discussed together."
Aruna headlines a draft class that also includes third-round pick Yuanxinai Yuan and fourth-round pick Kim Woojin. With those three selections, the Blazers now have the lineup flexibility to allow Oshima and Kayama to play in many different spots throughout matches. Whether or not those picks end up working out for the Blazers remains to be seen, but Aruna will be the center of that team no matter what.
Few people are more powerful than Eric Owens when the Chicago Wind are on the clock. After an abhorrent first season, Owens drafted Olympians Emmanuel Lebesson (2790) and Mo Zhang (2566), the latter of whom would become the Season 2 Women’s MVP. Those two players gave the Wind their first-ever playoff berth, but they couldn’t make it past the semifinal round. Owens aimed to change that by selecting Robert Gardos (2810) with the seventh pick in the Season 3 MLTT Draft. That season, those three players developed a rock-solid “Big Three,” ending with a Men’s MVP for Gardos, a third-place finish in that award for Lebesson and a second-straight appearance in Championship Weekend.
And yet, they bowed out to the Carolina Gold Rush in the semifinal round. Despite that Singles talent, they finished Season 3 with a 44.4% Doubles percentage as a team, tying the New York Slice and Florida Crocs for the lowest in all of MLTT. They entered the Season 4 MLTT Draft with the eighth pick, and that pick was sure to be used on a strong Doubles player.
That pick ended up being Cao Yantao, a player with a history of success in Doubles. He started that resume when he became the 2019 Croatia Junior Open U18 Boys’ Doubles Champion, and he most recently amended it when he and Shi Xunyao advanced to the second round at the 15th China National Games Mixed Doubles event this past November. Cao can also play in Singles if they ever need him to, as his success in the Zhengzhou Table Tennis Elite Grand Prix proved that he can thrive under immense pressure.
The Wind hope that Cao’s experience, which includes a spot on the China National Second Team in 2017, will translate to MLTT success. Whether that means improving the Wind’s Doubles percentage or contributing in Singles, Cao’s presence should go a long way to building upon their best season in team history.
When Portland Paddlers rookie Kang Dong-Soo took the table last season, he was nearly unstoppable. He helped the Paddlers secure a 2-1 record during Week 1. He won eight games during the Paddlers’ undefeated Week 3, which earned him a Men’s Player of the Week nod.
That unbelievable Week 3 would be his last. Kang did not compete in any of the Paddlers’ subsequent matches, making him ineligible to play in the Season 3 playoffs by way of the league’s three-weekend minimum rule. The Paddlers won the MLTT Cup without Kang, and they chose to release him after the end of their championship-winning season.
But Kang’s MLTT days are not over. He was one of many recently-released players to declare for the Season 4 MLTT Draft, and was expected to be among the first players with experience in the league to be selected. The former Player of the Week winner not only finished the regular season as the league’s No. 3 player, but he did so after playing in only two weekends. Whoever selected Kang would undoubtedly have a star on their hands, especially if he plays in enough weekends to qualify for the postseason.
That’s what led the Princeton Revolution to select him seventh overall. That was the only pick the Revolution had in the Season 4 MLTT Draft, as they retained nearly every player from a roster that made it to Championship Weekend in Season 3. They only released longtime chopper Mathieu de Saintilan, and it makes perfect sense that head coach Mathias Habesohn would replace him with perhaps the best chopper in the entire league last season.
The Revolution always seemed to be one piece away from becoming a legitimate threat in the Championship Match. They had two superstars in Cho Seungmin and Benedek Olah (2771). They had one of the league’s best dynamic Singles 2 duos in Hsien Tzu Cheng (2589) and Jiangshan Guo (2557). They had stellar Doubles players in Koyo Kanamitsu (2670) and Jinxin Wang (2721), who could also compete in Singles along with Yang Shuo (2751). None of that stopped the Revolution from running out of steam whenever Singles 3 rolled around, but that could change by drafting Kang, one of the best Singles players of last season.
If Kang plays in more matches and competes the same way he did in Weeks 1 and 3, it won’t be too difficult to imagine the Revolution hoisting an MLTT Cup.
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