Yijun (Tom) Feng, who graduated from the NYU SPS Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport in 2020, and who is now pursuing a master’s degree at NYU Stern, is currently at the Tokyo Olympics serving as an alternate for the US Table Tennis team. He began playing the sport at the age of six in China. He would visit his father’s office that had an old table on which he used to practice, with his dad serving him balls. As he matured, his skills became sharper and he began to compete. As a teenager he traveled to the US with his parents to play in numerous tournaments. In 2015, at the age of 18, he became a US citizen and was then eligible to compete in the US Nationals competition in Las Vegas. After the Nationals, he became the number-one ranked US men’s player, and competed in the North American Olympic Qualification tournament in April 2016. He helped the US win the North American Olympic Qualification, which secured his spot at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
After the Rio Olympics, Feng enrolled in the NYU SPS Tisch Institute for Global Sport’s BS in Sport Management. While he studied, he began playing table tennis professionally, signing with TTC Wiener Neustadt, an Austrian club. He played in the Austrian Division I League while also playing on NYU’s table tennis team and in international competitions with the US team. In 2018, he led the NYU table tennis team to victory in the College Table Tennis National Championship.
Feng has fond memories of his time at NYU SPS, and particularly enjoyed learning from the Tisch Institute’s Clinical Associate Professor David Hollander and Adjunct Instructor David Cooper. He has very much looked forward to being at the Tokyo Olympics and will once again be a student at NYU when classes resume this fall. We wish him all the best. His winning spirit and positive attitude are an inspiration and are sure to position him for success in the future.