PORTLAND, Ore. — “This was the best weekend ever, thanks to you!” 

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That’s how Christian Lillieroos thanked the crowd on Sunday. His Portland Paddlers just earned their third win of the weekend. They just became the first Major League Table Tennis team to win five matches this season. They faced off against two playoff teams — one of whom just won the MLTT championship — and absolutely eviscerated them. All while the many Paddlers fans in attendance chanted, screamed and cheered after every point they scored.

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For the Paddlers, this may have actually been the best weekend ever.

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“I feel so much happier winning this match more than the other two [in Week 1],” Lillieroos said on Friday. “We always want to win, but this was very special.”

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In just one weekend, the Paddlers rose to the top of MLTT. And they wanted to thank their loyal fans for it. They shouted “Let’s go, Paddlers!” before each serve. They sang Kotomi Omoda’s (SPINDEX: 2622) name to the bassline of “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes during Singles 2 matches. Chants of “Ham-pus Nord-berg!” and “Let’s go Ku-mar!” broke out whenever those players took the table.

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The Oregon Convention Center sounded like a Premier League football stadium all weekend. Whenever the Paddlers played, they could always count on the crowd for any strength they would need.

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“Portland came here and showed us how amazing of a crowd they are,” Nikhil Kumar (2760) said.

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But the Paddlers should give tremendous credit to themselves as well. That starts and ends with Omoda, who had the unenviable task of having to take down Matilda Ekholm (2525), Mo Zhang (2608) and Chen Sun (2561). With that gauntlet of star power in front of her, Omoda would have been lucky to take two of those matches. 

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She only lost two of her nine games all weekend, including a 3-0 sweep of Zhang on Saturday.

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“I thought [Omoda] had a chance to win, but I would never dream that she would win 3-0 [against Zhang],” Lillieroos said on Saturday. “That was a huge one.” 

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Kang Dong-Soo (2788) also did some very heavy lifting for the Paddlers. He entered Friday’s game against the Los Angeles Spinners with a three-point deficit, only to sweep Alexandre Robinot (2693) to tie that match back up. He started Sunday’s game against the Gold Rush and took the first three points of the match against Wei Wang (2683). He only lost one singles match all weekend, a mere one-point loss to Robert Gardos (2699). 

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Not once did Kang end a singles game without scoring in double digits. When the Paddlers needed Kang, he delivered. And when they didn’t need him, he delivered as well. 

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“He played very good the first weekend, but he had three victories; all of them were 2-1,” Lillieroos said. “A 2-1 victory compared to 3-0 is night and day.”

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Omoda and Kang had great help from the rest of their team. Hampus Nordberg (2754) entered the weekend with the toughest assignments on his team, and came out of it with a winning record against the likes of Ľubomír Pištej (2782), Emmanuel Lebesson (2759) and Enzo Angles (2752). Kumar shined in every one of his team’s doubles matches and outplayed each of his three Golden Game opponents. 

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Min Hyeok Kim (2742) only lost two games in his MLTT debut, proving that the Paddlers were right to choose him third overall in the 2025 MLTT Draft. And though Sid Naresh (2673) did not play much this weekend, he took the table alongside Kumar on Sunday against the Gold Rush, who traded him to the Paddlers in April. Naresh and Kumar won two of those three games against Angles and Kai Zhang (2621), Naresh’s former teammates.

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“We have five people that play,” Lillieroos said. “And if one person doesn’t keep up their game, the whole thing can fall apart.”

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What happens when you combine those stellar performances? A complete and utter domination of the three teams unlucky enough to face the Paddlers. They crushed the Spinners on Friday, 15-6. They throttled the Wind on Saturday, 16-5. And when they took the table against the Gold Rush on Sunday, they embarrassed the defending champions with a final score of 18-3.

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As of now, the Paddlers are the hottest team in Major League Table Tennis. But can they keep their momentum up? They look to add to their winning streak in Chicago from Oct. 24-26, and they hope to have another one of those “best weekends ever.”

Carolina Gold Rush:

When we last saw the Carolina Gold Rush, the reigning champions looked like they haven’t slowed down all summer. They went undefeated in Week 2 in front of their home crowd. Rookies Mohamed Shouman (2697) and Chen Sun won Player of the Week honors for their performances. It looked as though that trophy would stay in Carolina, despite how much of their championship-winning roster they lost in the offseason. They were still the team to beat heading into this weekend.

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And boy, did the other teams beat them.

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There’s no shame in losing to the Paddlers or the Wind, two teams that look very competitive this early into the season. But there’s some shame in how hard they fell. The Wind decimated the Gold Rush on Friday for an 18-3 victory. Two days later, the Paddlers toyed with them until they too beat the Gold Rush, 18-3. They would have lost Saturday’s match against the Spinners too if Shouman didn’t have the Golden Game of his life. They entered that game holding a 9-6 deficit. 

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Very little went right for the Gold Rush this week. They left Portland with a total of 18 points over three matches. That’s how many points the Paddlers and the Wind scored against them after one match. Angles and Zhang’s doubles set against Chicago’s Jeongwoo Park (2771) and Sean Zhang (2656) was the only time they won multiple games in a set in a loss this weekend.

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With that said, it’s hard to count the Gold Rush out of playoff contention after one bad weekend. The defending champions still have a record above .500, and they’re just two weeks removed from convincing victories against Atlanta, New York and Florida. They still have the bones of a core that won that championship last season. A championship that some thought the Texas Smash would win.

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That’s the thing about the Gold Rush. They’ve been counted out before. And they’re eager to prove that they should never be counted out ever again.

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Chicago Wind:

Between the Paddlers’ dominance, the Gold Rush’s implosion and the Spinners’ heroics on Sunday, the Chicago Wind could easily get lost in the shuffle. If they’re remembered for anything they did this weekend, it will probably be losing that final Golden Game against the Spinners on Sunday. That loss won’t be easy for the Wind to forget right away, knowing that they were three Golden Game points away from leaving Portland with a 2-1 record.

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But their one win was arguably the most impressive of the season so far. They opened their season on Friday against the defending champion Carolina Gold Rush, who won all three of their Week 2 matches. And yet, the Wind outplayed them throughout the afternoon. They swept every one of their singles sets except for Singles 2, which Mo Zhang won two of three games from. Carolina could only manage three total points before the Golden Game, which they lost 9 to 21. It’s hard to imagine a better start to Chicago’s season than their unbelievable final score of 18-3.

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The rest of the weekend didn’t fare well for the Wind. They entered Saturday’s Golden Game with a five-point deficit to the Paddlers, which they couldn’t recover from. They had a one-point lead against the Spinners on Sunday, and even reached 18 Golden Game points with a comfortable lead. They would have won that match had the Spinners not made their impossible comeback.

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It’s hard to call Chicago’s one win a fluke, given the promise they showed this season. Their recent draft class already looks like one of the best in the league, as first-round pick Robert Gardos and second-round pick Jeongwoo Park had exceptional weekends. Eric Owens had a great weekend, proving that his team can remain competitive against the league’s top teams even without Alex Cazacu (2705). And despite being the final point of that Golden Game, Mo Zhang proved why she was the highest-rated woman on SPINDEX heading into this weekend.

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Owens and his crew will have a chance to earn the winning record they almost had in Week 4, when they return to Chicago and host MLTT’s Week 4 matches at the end of October. 

Los Angeles Spinners:

New city. New coach. New players. New identity. The Los Angeles Spinners look unrecognizable from the Seattle Spinners of Season 2, and for the better. They hired Romain Lorentz to lead this team, someone who has experience in winning underneath the brightest lights. They added Matilda Ekholm to a core that includes Ľubomír Pištej and Aditya Sareen (2636). A new era of Spinners table tennis was about to begin, and they were ready to give Los Angeles its first-ever MLTT victory.

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That win wouldn’t come as fast as they would have hoped. They stumbled against the Portland Paddlers on Friday, despite a dominant performance from Pištej in both singles and doubles. They won three of their five sets against Carolina to enter the Golden Game with a three-point lead. Carolina outplayed Los Angeles in that Golden Game and handed them a three-point loss.

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It looked as though Sunday’s match would end the same way. The Wind only needed three points to win the Golden Game and send the Spinners home with a winless record. But then came Marcos Madrid (2670), who slowly and steadily cut that lead and put the Spinners back in the game. They won that game and earned their first victory of the season. 

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“I am proud of [my team], because they never gave up in the Golden Game, even though it was, like, almost impossible to come back [from],” Lorentz said. “That’s a happy ending.”

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The Spinners have the makings of a very, very strong team. Pištej and Sareen dropped just one of their nine games and already look like the best doubles pair in the league. Only Enzo Angles and Kai Zhang could take a doubles match from the Spinners all weekend, and they only won it by two points. First-rounder Alexandre Robinot had an impressive MLTT debut, earning a singles percentage of 44.4% and a golden point percentage of 62.5%. 

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There’s still a lot of work for the Spinners to accomplish, but there’s still plenty to be excited about. They proved that they can hang with three of the best teams in the league, even if two of those matches ended with losses. This weekend was a massive step forward for the Spinners, and they believe that they can keep going further.

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“If we keep the same fighting spirit, if we show the same atmosphere as a team, we will have some better days,” Lorentz said.

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