Yale Table Tennis Was Dying. A Few People Decided It Wouldn't.

Cyrus Cursetjee walked into Yale's gymnasium as a freshman and found two tables, both falling apart. Three people showed up to practice. By the second week, it was clear: Yale Table Tennis was dying.

Yale University (one of the most prestigious institutions in the world) and table tennis was invisible there, too.

The Problem No One Talks About

Table tennis is not a varsity sport at Yale. It's not a varsity sport at almost any American university. In fact, only one university in the entire United States offers scholarships for table tennis players: Texas Wesleyan.

The reason is structural. Table tennis is not part of the NCAA. Without NCAA recognition, the sport cannot generate revenue for universities. And if a sport can't make the university money, there's no incentive to recruit players, fund programs, or build facilities.

At Yale, table tennis is classified as a “club sport.” That means everything, funding, equipment, coaching, logistics, recruitment, is entirely student-managed. The team submits a budget request each year to the Club Sports Department, where a committee of student representatives decides how much money they receive. Players purchase equipment and travel out of pocket, then submit reimbursement requests afterward.

What Collapsed

A decade before Cyrus arrived, Yale Table Tennis had a coach, consistent players, and momentum. Then the pressure got to people. Players who felt training was too intense stopped showing up. After COVID-19, the club struggled to rebuild, and the community fractured.

Cyrus saw two groups of players.

The first group: competitive players. Many of them had trained formally as children, often pushed by their parents. They had skill, but not always passion. If other strong players weren't at practice, they didn't see the point in coming. Without serious training partners, they stayed home.

The second group: amateur players. They loved the sport and wanted to improve. But if no advanced players would rally with them, they felt unwelcome, and they disappeared.

Two broken tables, no coach, no structure, and no reason for either group to show up.

The Rebuild

Cyrus went directly to the Club Sports Director, explained the situation, and built a relationship over time. Every year, the director agreed to purchase one or two new tables from his own budget, on the condition that the students set them up themselves.

Cyrus knew the tables would break if people used them unsupervised, so he made a rule: every table and every piece of equipment gets locked after practice, no exceptions. Today, Yale has seven high-quality Joola tables, all in good condition.

Then he restructured practice entirely. Open Play on Wednesdays and Fridays, casual, welcoming, anyone can come. Team Practice on Sundays, serious, structured, committed players only. The separation was deliberate. Competitive players knew that Sunday meant real training. Amateur players knew that Wednesday and Friday meant they belonged.

He started a free coaching program: one hour every Wednesday and Friday, 30-minute slots, open to anyone who signed up. At first, only three students came consistently, but all three signed up every week. Two of them eventually joined the women's team, a team that didn't exist until last year.

He introduced club dues of $25 per semester for all members. The money relieved pressure on the budget. More importantly, it created commitment. When people pay, they show up.

Two Hours Each Way

The coaching problem was the hardest to solve.

Yale's regulations cap Club Sports coaches' salaries at $25 per hour. Cyrus reached out to several coaches in the New Haven area, but none would accept the rate, especially when the commute was over an hour each way.

Then he found Ahmed Elmallah and Fei Zhai.

Ahmed is Egyptian. He lived and coached in Saudi Arabia, where he trained the Saudi national team, before moving to the United States. Fei is a former member of the Sichuan provincial team in China. Together, they run Gold Coast Table Tennis Club in Port Washington, Long Island.

They said yes.

Every other Sunday, Ahmed and Fei drive two hours from Long Island to New Haven to coach Yale's team, then drive two hours back, for $25 an hour.

It took months to get them registered as Yale employees. The bureaucracy alone would have stopped most people, but Ahmed and Fei kept showing up. Ahmed also helped Yale secure a sponsorship from Butterfly, giving the team access to discounted equipment and jerseys. Ahmed coached a national team. Now he drives four hours round trip to coach college students in a gymnasium where the floors are sometimes slippery because they don't get cleaned often enough.

When I read about Ahmed's story, I recognized it immediately. An Egyptian who lived in Saudi Arabia, coaching table tennis far from home, investing hours into a program that most people wouldn't even notice. Sand Smash exists because of people like Ahmed.

Kevin

Kevin Guo arrived at Yale as a freshman in 2024. He had competed at the national level in Canada, and his presence immediately raised the ceiling for the entire program.

Kevin started playing at seven years old. His house had a table in the basement, and his father and grandfather would play frequently. He wanted to join them, but because of how short he was, they kept saying no. He didn't stop asking. Eventually, his mother took him to a club for lessons, and he never looked back.

Before Yale, Kevin trained at True North Table Tennis Club under Hongtao Chen and Eugene Wang, Canadian legends. At Yale, the coaching is different. Ahmed and Fei come every other week, not every day. The rest of the time, Kevin trains independently.

“I have to make sure that I stay disciplined every time I practice, and to avoid letting bad habits form.”

— Kevin Guo

He compensates by thinking about the sport constantly, in the shower, between classes, and during meals. He watches competition videos when he has spare time. He works on shots he never used in Canada: reverse pendulum serves, chop blocks. Without the pressure of national-level competition, he experiments.

Last year, Kevin made the quarterfinals at the NCTTA National Championships, top eight in North America. This season, he and Cyrus run coaching slots on Wednesdays and Fridays that are fully booked two months in advance.

His most memorable moment at Yale? Winning his round of 16 match at Nationals, rescheduling his flight because the tournament ran late, landing at JFK at 11 PM, arriving back at Yale at 3:30 AM, and sitting for a programming midterm at 9:00 AM.

What Kevin values most about NCTTA is something you won't find in national-level competition. At provincial and national tournaments, players are often pressured by parents, by rankings, by obligation. At NCTTA, everyone is there because they chose to be. Former competitive players who quit in high school to focus on academics pick the sport back up in college. People who haven't touched a racket in years rediscover why they loved it. Nobody's being forced. Kevin sees himself playing for the rest of his life, at least three tournaments a year, he says.

Subir

Subir is a freshman, class of 2029, pre-med, from Rye Brook, New York, which, he will tell you firmly, is not upstate.

He joined Yale Club Table Tennis in September 2025. He's not a competitive player. He plays to relax. He's been playing recreationally for years and wanted to keep going in college.

What he found surprised him.

“Despite being surrounded by more experienced and advanced players, I never feel intimidated to go up to them and ask for a game or even some advice.”

— Subir

His biggest breakthrough so far: completing a backhand rally of over 100 shots at decent tempo. A small victory, he says, but it showed him he was moving in the right direction.

His most humbling moment: getting beaten by Kevin while Kevin was playing with his iPhone. He says he's passed that stage now, but the experience showed him how deep the game goes.

Subir is the kind of player Cyrus rebuilt the club for, someone who isn't trying to go pro, someone who loves the sport and wants to get better. Four years ago, he would have walked into that gymnasium, seen two broken tables and three people, and walked right back out.

Now he pays $25 a semester, trains three times a week, gets free coaching from Kevin and Cyrus, competes in a Friday league, and says his appreciation for the game has grown tremendously.

“For a long time, table tennis was something that I did for fun with friends. It still is that. But now I feel like I am really learning the game.”

— Subir

What strikes him most is how the club structures his life without overwhelming it. Sunday practices keep his weekends from dissolving into nothing. The captains hold everyone accountable, showing up on time, staying committed. For a pre-med student juggling coursework and clinical ambitions, having something physical and competitive that isn't academics is a release valve. He didn't come to Yale planning to take table tennis seriously, but seven semesters remain, and he's already counting.

What Yale Built This Year

The 2024-25 season was the turning point. The 2025–26 season is the proof.

Yale is sending both its co-ed and women's teams to NCTTA Nationals — the first time in history. A six-team internal league with 36 participants competes every Friday. Yale hosted the first-ever Harvard-Yale invitational table tennis tournament.

The team tries to hold bi-weekly dinners, though turnout is uneven since many players live off-campus.

Generous donations from alumnus Kevin Ryan, founder of Business Insider, MongoDB, and others, helped fund the team's travel to Nationals. The budget is healthier than it's been in years. Seven tables, a coach who drives two hours each way, a national-level player who rebooks his own flights, a freshman who counts 100-shot rallies as milestones, and a women's team that didn't exist two years ago.

The Pattern

Sand Smash has covered this story before, in different countries, on different continents, with different levels of resources, but the pattern is always the same. A sport the institution doesn't take seriously. Passionate people holding it together because no one else will. And a handful of stubborn individuals who decide that if the system won't fix it, they'll do it themselves.

Table tennis at Yale nearly disappeared. It survived because a few people refused to let it go.