Yesterday, the USATT announced the time and place for the 2020 US National Table Tennis Championships, which will be held at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Convention Center this July 6-10. At last year's US Nationals, held a 15-minute drive north at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Lily Zhang and Kanak Jha each added to their already impressive collections of national singles titles. Both young Olympians will surely be motivated to defend their titles. Likewise, the USATT itself is motivated to put its best face forward after a tumultuous year, one low-lighted by the forced resignation of the entire Board of Directors after the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee found the National Governing Body of table tennis to be hopelessly dysfunctional. In a press release, USATT CEO Virginia Sung highlighted the rich history of US table tennis in "the sports and entertainment capital of the world," Las Vegas. "Las Vegas is more than just a tourist city for our USATT community," said Sung. "It is a place of rich tradition and feelings of nostalgia and the memory of major events past." One such major event of the past is the proverbial elephant in the room: the horrific 2017 shooting at Mandalay Bay that left 58 dead and 546 wounded. While we must always remember the lives lost and forever altered in that tragic and senseless massacre, celebrations of sport like the US Nationals are powerful reminders of the resiliency of the human spirit.

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