Nilai paddlers a smash hit

the size and velocity of the celluloid circular object used in play, the Nilai University Table Tennis Club (NUTTC) in Negri Sembilan may be small (in terms of membership) but they can be a smash hit if wielded with the right force, spin and combination.

Their women’s doubles, for instance, can be an attestation of this statement, despite the club (who are practically the Nilai University team) having only five playing and four non-playing members.

Lau Lit Yin, born and bred in Kuala Lumpur, paired up with Boon Yu Jing to bag the doubles title in the inter-varsity championships held at the Technical University of Malaysia in Malacca last year. In fact, they moved one rung up the ladder as they were runners-up in the same event the previous year.

And in the Southern Zone of the Private Institutions of Higher Learning Sports Council in August last year, NUTTC bagged first prize in the team event with Lit Yin winning the women’s singles silver.

At the same competition the previous year, Lit Yin emerged runner-up to her teammate Tan Mei Chyi in the women’s singles, and teamed up with Lim Chia Xi to take the mixed doubles bronze.

As a singles player, Lit Yin has certainly stamped her mark, chalking up feat after feat. She was third in the 2016 Kuala Lumpur Open, earning her the right to represent KL in the Malaysia Open. She was the women’s singles champion in the KL Open the previous year.

At the 2016 Higher Education Institutions Sports Championships at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Skudai, Johor, Lit Yin was third in the women’s singles.

Prior to this, the 21-year-old Lit Yin has had chalked up numerous achievements in table tennis, a sport she picked up when she was aged seven.

“At that time, my parents took my two brothers and I to SJKC Taman Connaught (in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur), where there was a badminton court. Next to it were a few table tennis tables. I saw them and my Dad asked me to give it a try. I took it up and I liked it very much,” said Lit Yin, who completed her accounting and finance degree at Nilai University last October.

At the age of 18, Lit Yin enrolled for a Foundation Studies course at Nilai University in January 2014 and naturally joined the NUTTC as an ordinary member.

The same year, Lit Yin took part in the 34th Malaysia Youth Table Tennis Championships, where she made the quarter-finals of the girls’ Under-18 event.

“Our primary objective of organising the tournament was to make money although there were also the aims of promoting table tennis as a healthy lifestyle and developing fitness, leadership and teamwork,” said Lit Yin, whose term as president ended in July 2016.

“Our members were all multitaskers as they all efficiently executed the respective tasks assigned to them.”