Last Wednesday, the intermediate round of the university team championships in table tennis took place in Göttingen, in which our team successfully participated despite personnel challenges and finished in a strong second place. The tournament was held in the format of a 4-team tournament, but unfortunately we were only able to compete with 3 players due to illness at short notice on the day of the match. Even with this difficulty, we naturally wanted to achieve the best possible result in order to qualify for the final round in Hamburg. The team, consisting of Karl Walter, Louis Vogel and Gururaj Patil, was therefore highly motivated right from the start and wanted to make the best of the situation.

In the first two games, we played against the University of Saarbrücken and Göttingen. Thanks to good performances, we were able to win both games with a clear 6:2 victory, even when we were outnumbered. This secured us second place in the group early on and in the third game we faced the University of Leipzig, the current favorite and last year's winner of the university team championships.

In the third game of the tournament, we faced a team that demanded everything from us. Despite a good performance in the opening doubles, we lost the first game 0:3, losing two sets by just two points. But even after the difficult start, the whole team performed well in the following singles, but unfortunately could not be rewarded in the end. Both Louis Vogel and Karl Walter were unfortunate to lose their singles in the deciding set and Gururaj Patil was also unable to win his singles match. Leipzig deserved to win and qualified directly for the final of the DHM, while Karlsruhe ended up in a good second place.

And the fighting spirit was rewarded. As a result of an organizational change, second place now also qualifies for the final round of the university team championships, the entire team is now looking forward to the final round in Hamburg and wants to give it their all once again to reach one of the top places.