Wheatley School Student, Katherine Dong, Calculates Her Chances for a 2024 Olympic Berth

by Warren Rosenberg, MetroSports Magazine - May 21, 2021

When she’s not busy studying her favorite academic subject, Mathematics, 15-year old Long Island Wheatley School student, Katherine Dong, is polishing her skills as a competitive Table Tennis player, collecting trophies, and trying to follow in the footsteps of other Table Tennis scholar-athletes previously covered in MetroSports Magazine. These include N.Y.U.’s 2018 NCTTA National Championship team members Adar Alguetti and Leslie Liu, and 2012 U.S. Olympic team member Lily Zhang.

Guided by coach, Hui Yuan Liu at the Port Washington Table Tennis Club, Katherine is a two-time champion of the Herricks High School Table Tennis Tournament, winner of the Lily Yip Table Tennis Club’s April 2018 Open, and a frequent competitor at the Westchester Table Tennis Center in Pleasantville, NY, where photographer Jayadas Chelur captured these photos.

As a competitive Table Tennis player, Katherine’s tournament rating has steadily climbed; from an initial 653 in 2016, her first year of USA Table Tennis sanctioned competitions, through the 1,100 mark at the end of 2017, to her high of 1,535 at the beginning of 2020. Since 2016, she has participated in 29 sanctioned tournaments, 14 of them being the monthly Westchester Open along with two appearances at the North American Team Championships in 2017 and 2018, the 2019 U.S. Nationals, and the 2021 U.S. Nationals New York State Qualifier where, by the way, she competed against two athletes previously featured in MetroSports Magazine, Estee Ackerman and Amoolya Menon.

In addition to Table Tennis, Mathematics and Language Arts, this accomplished and well-rounded young woman also enjoys producing art. One of her works is shown below.

She is certainly one to watch.