Burlingame’s 888 Table Tennis Center is now officially home to the U.S. National Table Tennis team, hosting athletes training for the upcoming Olympic games.
Lily Zhang, Olympian and current member of the U.S. Women’s National Table Tennis Team, attended an April 23 ribbon-cutting event for the new designation, playing an exhibition match against team member Rachel Sung.
Zhang, who will be competing in both single and team events at the 2024 Paris games, said that the 888 Table Tennis Center facilities mimic an high-level international competition environment that the women’s team will use to train for the upcoming 2024 Paris games.
As she trains, her focus remains on her love of the sport.
“I started when I was a little girl, and it didn’t start as anything serious. My parents play for fun, and I would play with them in the Stanford laundry room when we went to do laundry,” Zhang, a Bay Area native, said. “I think over time, I started looking at the results that I would have and statistics and I kind of fused it into my identity, so that part was really tough.”
Her first Olympic games was London 2012, where she was so nervous her hand was “shaking as I was serving,” she said. By now, however, her experience has taught her to embrace enjoyment of the sport instead of measuring herself by the scoreboard.
“I think what was important for me was to really take a step back from that and to bring myself back into the shoes of a 7-, 8-year-old me and rediscover why I fell in love with the sport,” Zhang said.
Opened in 2020, 888 Table Tennis Center is home to 40 table tennis tables and was founded by Huifen Chan. It offers both elite-level training camps as well as recreational programs and group classes.
“We want 888 to be about world-class, Olympic-level training. We also want it to be a fun and welcoming environment for everyone in the community through our recreational, our fitness, our youth development and our therapeutic programs,” Chan said.
The 888 Table Tennis Center was dubbed an inclusive and welcoming space that creates a sense of “belonging and camaraderie” in Burlingame and San Mateo County, U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, said at the ribbon cutting.
“Programs like a Parkinson’s pingpong class and group sessions for kids with special needs exemplify the center’s commitment to serving individuals of all ages and abilities,” he said.
A lack of institutional support for table tennis was what originally inspired the inception of 888, Chan said.
“When we got involved with the table tennis community, we realized that kids who love to play the sport didn’t enjoy the same infrastructure as other youth sports. And frankly, that’s what lit a fire in us,” she said.
The sport of table tennis has improved in popularity since Nikhil Kumar — a 21-year-old college student who competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — first started his career, he said.
“I think it’s continuously growing, I think both as a professional sport and recreationally,” he said. “With such a facility like this, I think it inspires all people from all walks of life to want to try playing table tennis, whether it’s for fun, or whether it’s to be competitively, professionally.”
Kumar trained for the Tokyo games at 888 Table Tennis Center, he said, and is hoping to train for the Paris games there as well — the men’s team still has to qualify for singles events because they did not make team qualifiers.
“It’s been a different challenge for me,” he said. “I think the journey for 2020 is very different from what I’ve been trying for 2024. There’s a lot more flexibility in high school and I was traveling a lot more. I think now I feel a find more of a balance between school and table tennis.”
Although the women’s team is set and ready for Paris, Zhang said, the Olympic qualification process was rigorous — with the U.S. Women’s National Team finishing first at the 2023 Pan Am Championships to secure a spot.
“I think the qualification process this time was really tough on all of us. Being able to have a team is not easy, because it’s through the entire Pan-American region,” she said. “I think we’re just really happy and proud of this as a team, that we really work through tough moments together and support each other.”
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