2B - The Michigan Daily - SportsMonday - January 23, 2006 CLUB PORTSWEEKLY Club table tennis offers fun for all able Aicigut ?uailg Athlete of the Week Name: Tim Cook Team: Ice Hockey Hometown: Montclair, New Jersey Class: Junior Why: During Friday night's game Cook scored his first colle giate goal after playing 81 scoreless games as a Wolverine. He may not remember the moment he scored, but he gave us all something we will never forget. ['M' SCHEDULE By Julian Khaira For the Daily It's 7 p.m. on Friday when senior Bryant Shain tightens the net on one of the ping-pong tables by the wall inside the Coliseum. The players are gradually making their way through the entrance doors and onto the court to get warmed up. During the past five years, the Michigan table tennis club has undergone rapid development and growth. The club - once comprised of a small group of 9 or 10 college students interested in playing the game - has tripled in size since its creation. Undergraduate students, graduate students, professors and other citizens of Ann Arbor now come to hone their spins and slams every Friday night. Shain, who is president, is largely responsible for the club's development over the past few years. "I would consider table tennis as my one true passion" Shain said. With the help of fellow leader Bhargav Avasarala, Shain has started to orga- nize a once-a-month intraclub tournaments with the intentions of promoting friendly competition and preparing the team's best players for the annual Asso- ciation of College Unions International Championship, a national tournament held each spring. The ACUI is open to midwestern universities and colleges like Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan. In 2005, Paulo Umesaki, a second-year Business graduate student and for- mer professional table tennis player in Brazil placed first in the Midwestern division of the ACUI. For Paulo, the table tennis club satisfies his love for the game without being overly competitive or time consuming. "The club is very informal," Umesaki said. "You find someone at the begin- ning of the practice, and you play them. We don't have a coach." Another regular that has helped contribute to the general success of the club is 75-year-old John Levens, a retired engineer living in Ann Arbor. He enjoys the general relaxing atmosphere of the game as well as the spirited nature of the club. For Shain, Levens and the 30 other members of the table tennis club, it is this friendly competitive spirit that makes the club enjoyable. The six hours the club meets each week is a time for the players to take a break from their daily routines. Although the club has come a long way since its founding, Shain is hopeful that it will continue to develop in the future. "We need more students at Michigan to join the club," Shain said. "It doesn't matter how much table tennis they've played. We have enough equipment and tables." The club holds open practices from 7 to 9 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Coliseum. The club always welcomes new members and inex- perienced players. Date Event Location 1/25 M Basketball vs. Michigan State 1/26 W Basketball vs. Northwestern 1/27 M Tennis vs. William and Mary 1/27 W Gymnastics vs. Ohio State 1/27 Ice Hockey at Michigan State 1/27 M Gymnastics at Oklahoma 1/27-28 M Track and Field at Boston Invitational 1/28 W Track and Field at Michigan Intercollegiate 1/28 M Swimming and Diving vs. Ohio State 1/28 M Basketball vs. Wisconsin 1/28 Wrestling vs. Northwestern 1/28 Ice Hockey vs. Michigan State 1/29 W Tennis at Vanderbilt 1/29 M Swimming and Diving at Indiana 1/29 W Basketball vs. Wisconsin 1/29 Wrestling vs. Michigan State Ann Arbor Ann Arbor Ann Arbor Ann Arbor East Lansing Norman, Okla. Boston, Mass. Ypsilanti Ann Arbor Ann Arbor Ann Arbor Detroit Nashville, Tenn. Bloomington Ann Arbor Ann Arbor Time 8 p.m. 7 p.m. 6 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 8 p.m. 8 p.m. TBA 9 a.m. 1 p.m. 2:35 p.m. 7 p.m. 7:35 p.m. 9:30 p.m. 12 p.m. 1 p.m. 2 p.m. Sting of defeat: 'M' on wrong s ide of upset By Colt Rosenswelg Daily Sports Writer The last time the Penn State gymnastics team came to Ann Arbor, the underdog Michigan team pulled off an upset. This time, the roles were reversed. Michigan entered the meet ranked No. 4, and Penn State was ranked No. 8. The Wolverines looked tense and seemed to feel the pressure, but the Nittany Lions seemed as relaxed as if it were nothing more than a practice. After taking the lead at the start, Michigan subsequently fell further behind with each and every event. "We came in here with a pretty good attitude," senior Gerry Signorelli said. "Unfortunately, we just kind of started getting off, a little bit, and we didn't pull it back together in time." Unlike the Windy City Invitational, where Michi- gan's third-place finish was anticipated and satisfac- tory, Saturday's 209.40-206.45 loss to Penn State left a bad taste in the team's mouth. "I expected a lot more," Michigan coach Kurt Gold- er said. "We had a pretty good meet in Chicago, and I thought we worked on a majority of our problems. I was expecting us to rock this meet. But it didn't hap- pen. I'm pretty disappointed." Michigan bested Penn State in just one event, vault, though Golder said he felt his team should also have won floor exercise also. According to Golder, the judg- es seemed to loosen their standards as the competi- tion got underway, which worked in Penn State's favor since it rotated to floor after Michigan. The pommel horse improved from last week, with four gymnasts competing cleanly rather than just three, but many of the other events seemed to take a step backward. More lineup changes - Signorelli and sophomore Paul Woodward were inserted into the pommel horse lineup Saturday - will follow, Golder promised. "Those guys who made mistakes (on Saturday) are coming out of the lineup," Golder said. "They're going to have to figure it out and solve their problems. Certainly we'll help them with that, but their routines NITTANY LIONS Continued from page 1B "Our meet overall was not as smooth as our meet at Nebraska," Plocki said. "We were a little rough around the edges in some spots. But I think we were also really great on bars. It was our best event. The routines were real- ly clean and solid all the way through. I thought we did improve vault this week over last week." Four of Michigan's six competitors placed in the top five on the uneven bars, including fifth-year senior Lauren Mirkovich, who won with a score of 9.900. The highlight of the meet for the Wolverines may have been the breakout performance of freshman Tatjana Thuener-Rego, who tied Bruck for second place on bars. Thuener-Rego competed in three out of the four events and performed on beam in exhibition. Her unofficial all-around score of 38.950 was sec- ond only to Bruck. "I was really proud of Tatji," Plocki said. "She had a great meet tonight, definitely her best showing. She went 9.85 in exhibition on beam, so I was wishing, after the fact, that we had had her in the lineup, but hindsight is 20/20. But I thought she had a good meet all the way around tonight." The Wolverines are not satisfied with where they are at right now. If Michigan wants to compete with the best teams in the nation, it needs to see fewer wobbles and more stuck landings. But Plocki is glad to know that she can count on her veterans to stand up under pressure. "Overall, the thing that is most important is that, twice now, we've ended a competition on balance beam in a situation where the meet was on the line, and we were able to not count any falls on beam and were able to pull off the win," Plocki said. It's still the beginning of the sea- son, but I'm happy with the team's performance, and I'm ready to get back in the gym on Monday and keep working some new stuff." EUGENE ROBERTSON/Daily The men's gymnastics team didn't have much to celebrate after Saturday's meet against Penn State. are already made easy enough, so they should be able to hit them. It's early in the year, and these are new routines, but I still expect a lot more than what we're doing right now." The competition against Penn State was what Gold- er and his assistants termed a "target" meet when map- ping out the year. The strategy, which is designed to ensure a fresh team at the end of the season, involves going all-out for certain meets and resting key athletes in others. For instance, because next week's meet in Oklahoma is not a target meet, talented freshman Joe Catrambone will most likely not compete. The target status of Saturday's competition may have contributed to some of Michigan's miscues. Golder said many of the young gymnasts are still learning how to stay relaxed while competing. "I think they're trying a little too hard, trying to con- trol too much," Golder said. "They don't try so hard in practice to control things so much. They've got to learn to let it all hang out and compete aggressively." The meet did have its bright spots. Signorelli gave a typically strong performance, finishing second in the all-around competition to Penn State's graceful freshman Casey Sandy. Sophomore Daniel Rais and senior Andrew DiGiore tied for the best score on vault, each putting up a 9.35. Catrambone also stood out, posting a 9.55 on the high bar after tweaking his Achilles on vault. "He should have gotten the Newt Loken award," Golder said. The Newt Loken award is given for the best indi- vidual performance on a single event, and on Saturday, it went to Penn State sophomore Tommy Ramos for his still rings routine. The meet was a setback, but there is still a lot of season left. In 1999, Michigan's most recent national championship season the team didn't win a meet until March, Golder noted. Signorelli, like Golder, still has a positive outlook, despite being discouraged by Saturday's showing. "We didn't hit enough routines tonight," Signo- relli said. "I don't know the reason why yet, but I'm sure we'll figure it out on Monday when we get back into the gym." CONFERE N CE 2006 STEPHEN M. Ross SCHoot OF B USIN ESS AT TIE UNIVERsITY OF MICHI(GAN January 26 & 27, 2006 Keynote Seakers J. Bruce Harreld - IBM Sr. VP: Marketing & Strategy Sanjay Pol - Cisco Systems VP: New Business Ventures, Messaging Security Michael Wilens - The Thompson Corp. 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