PORTLAND, Ore. — Hundreds of people packed Hall A of the Oregon Convention Center on Saturday night and colored the stands in orange. The harmonious cacophony of these roaring onlookers drowned out the sound of every other conversation taking place. Anytime the noise would start to die down, the sound of a sold-out crowd chanting “JIWEI! JIWEI! JIWEI!” re-emerged as if silence was never an option.

This commotion reached its apex at the start of doubles. Almost as soon as Jiwei Xia approached the table. As he’s done many times over the last two years. That audience is used to seeing Xia walk up to the table, grab his paddle and rally for the city of Portland. He’s the Paddlers’ first-ever draft pick. He and his family have lived there for nearly a decade. He coaches at Portland-based Paddle Palace and remains a huge part of the city’s table tennis and pickleball communities. What isn’t Xia to the city of Portland?

“The communities, my club members, my students, my coworkers, my pickleball teams, everything’s great,” Xia told Table Tennis TV. “Even my neighbors are great. I love it in Portland.”

There’s really only one answer: Xia is not a member of the Portland Paddlers. Not anymore. Two seasons of wearing green came to an abrupt end when the Atlanta Blazers selected him in the 2025 MLTT Expansion Draft. The Paddlers began a season without him for the first time in team history. Xia now represents a city other than the one he calls home.

Several of Xia’s neighbors decided to do the same on Saturday night. They wore orange jerseys to match the color of Xia’s new kit. They chanted “LET’S GO BLAZERS!!!” as if their hometown team wasn’t opposite that table. Not even the presence of Nikhil Kumar, who has blossomed into a star over the past season, could take the crowd’s attention away from Xia, whom Kumar still considers a dear friend.

“We ended up being teammates for that entire season last year, and it was amazing,” Kumar said in September. “He was, at that point, a huge person in terms of bonding the entire team together.”

That friendship would have to be postponed until after doubles. For three games, there would be no sweet reunion. No memories of team dinners, no jokes about Xia never losing a set, nothing. This was a battle between Xia and Kayama Yu vs. Kumar and Sid Naresh. And until that battle ended, neither side cared for anything other than winning as many games as they could.

Xia served the ball amid chants of his name from the passionate crowd. The first game was underway. The Blazers built an early 7-3 lead, but the Paddlers kept clawing back. This back-and-forth battle crescendoed into a golden point, one that the Paddlers would win. Not an ideal start for Xia’s homecoming against the team with MLTT’s best record.

But Xia and the Paddlers had grit. They also had the crowd on their side. And neither of those two boons were more apparent than in the second game. Any point that the Paddlers scored, the Blazers would respond back. 2-2 turned into 3-3 which became 5-5, 6-6, and then 7-7. The scoreboard more closely resembled a mirror with all these knotted scores. That is, until the score reached 9-8. Xia and Kayama celebrated after earning the final two points of the second game, an accomplishment that the fired-up crowd relished in along with them.

Only one doubles game remained. A win here would give the Blazers a 5-4 match lead heading into the game’s 10-minute intermission. It was looking just as close as the second game did, especially when the score tied at six points apiece once again.

And then, a scoring run happened. Xia and Kayama scored their seventh point. Their eighth point. Their ninth point. And finally, their 10th point. All before Portland could respond. The restless crowd couldn’t look anywhere other than the table. They could miss Xia and the underdog Blazers taking their second doubles game if they did.

It wasn’t over yet. The Paddlers stayed alive after an overshoot from Xia. Blazers coach Suzi Battison called a timeout, hoping to kill any momentum Kumar and Naresh could gain from this point. The four players went back to the table after the Blazers discussed how to best close this game out. Xia served the ball. Kumar tapped it right back. Kayama hit it to Naresh, whose shot sailed over the edge of the table. The ball hit the ground. Xia let out a scream that overwhelmed the cheers from the crowd.

“A victory that means more than any score could ever say,” play-by-play commentator Evan Lepler said on that night’s broadcast.

The players stepped away from the court for the 10-minute break, but much of the crowd stayed seated. They wanted to hear from the one player still on that court, their city’s own, Jiwei Xia. So they shouted for him, just as they had done throughout this match. “JIWEI! JIWEI! JIWEI!” was all they could say.

MLTT emcee Tianna Cohen understood the crowd’s demand. She raced over to an emotional Xia with a microphone in her hand, asking him about all of the thoughts and feelings racing around his mind. A fan shouted, “I love you, Jiwei!” before he could answer. Xia responded with an “I love you, too.” He truly did. These weren’t just Portland Paddlers fans. These were his pickleball and table tennis students. These were the close friends he’s made while living in Portland. These were the family members that believed in a table tennis journey that, on Saturday night, brought him back to the only American city he’s ever claimed as his own.

And on Saturday night, in front of hundreds of people he has personally impacted, Xia once again claimed what they already knew.

“This is my court!” Xia screamed into Cohen’s microphone.

The match resumed following those 10 minutes, without much going right for the Blazers. The Paddlers won the next six games and set themselves up with a six-point lead in the Golden Game. Xia and his team battled in that Golden Game, enough to turn their foes’ all-but-certain win into an uncomfortable, narrow lead. But a lead nonetheless, one that turned into a 16-5 win for the Paddlers.

As soon as the match ended, the reunions began. Xia laughed with the many people who wore his jersey in the stands that night. Kumar joined in on Xia’s post-match interview just to say that his former teammate played “out of his mind” against him. Both the Paddlers and the city of Portland embraced Xia as if he never left. And in a way, he never truly did.

This was his court, after all. No matter where in this league he plays.

“Even though I’m not a Portland Paddler anymore, I still feel like this is my home court,” Xia said. “This is my hometown, so the people cheering for me, my brothers, my pickleball team, my friends, my students, I love it. Nothing [is] better than this. Nothing.”

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