‍LOS ANGELES — The morning before the Los Angeles Spinners (4-8, 114 points) faced the Bay Area Blasters during Week 7, head coach Romain Lorentz was asked a simple question: “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” He could have answered that question in many different ways: getting better sleep, starting a new workout routine, spending more time outdoors, so on and so forth.

What was Lorentz’s resolution?

“Winning more matches for the Spinners!”

He wasn’t kidding. At the time, the Spinners held a 1-7 record and found themselves far away from a playoff position. Winning had to start as soon as possible if they wanted to extend their season. And with the Spinners’ first-ever homestand in Los Angeles set to take place in mid-December, they had a prime opportunity to start that resolution on the right foot.

The Spinners’ first two matches couldn’t have started more differently. They started their week off with a 14-7 win against the Atlanta Blazers before falling 5-16 to the Bay Area Blasters. Their weekend would depend entirely on their performance against New York, the same team they lost an ultimate golden point to during Week 5. 

But a heartbreaking loss only sets up a sweet revenge down the road. The Spinners beat the Slice 16-5 to finish their homestand with a 2-1 record. 

“We were looking forward to [this] weekend,” Lorentz told Table Tennis TV. “Hopefully, we continue that way.”

Those wins didn’t come without adversity. Matilda Ekholm (SPINDEX: 2568) tweaked her leg prior to Friday’s match against Atlanta, and she re-aggravated it during her Singles 2 match against Andrea Todorovic (2522). But that injury couldn’t stop her from winning five of her nine games, including two of three from both Todorovic and Bay Area’s Lily Zhang (2592).

Ekholm had plenty of help from her teammates. Ľubomír Pištej (2717) dominated in the Spinners’ doubles sets, winning six of a possible nine games. That included a sweep against New York’s Wenzhang Tao (2734) and Jishan Liang (2693) alongside Marcos Madrid (2663). 

Alexandre Robinot (2738) continued his stellar rookie season by winning five of his nine singles games and forcing two additional golden points. Kou Lei (2777) controlled the back half of the Spinners’ order with his six singles wins, three of which came in a sweep against New York’s Haocheng Wang (2687) on Sunday.

The Spinners will enter 2026 with plenty of momentum, as winners of three of their last four matches. There’s still work that needs to be done before finding themselves in a playoff spot, but most resolutions take more than a day to see through anyway.

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Bay Area Blasters:

The Bay Area Blasters (5-7, 117 points) found themselves in a perilous predicament heading into Week 8. They had already plummeted to the bottom of a competitive West Division. They were fresh off a 4-17 loss to the fourth-place Los Angeles Spinners in Week 7. If the Blasters had any hope of making the playoffs, they needed far more than one small step in Los Angeles to land there.

Well, this weekend was one giant leap for Bay Area. 

New York, you had a problem during their Friday afternoon match. The Blasters started that match with nine consecutive wins, sweeping Singles 1, Singles 2 and Doubles to enter the halfway point without dropping a single game. The Slice attempted a valiant comeback, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Blasters from taking a commanding 18-3 victory. 

Up next: the hometown Los Angeles Spinners. One of the four other teams vying for a playoff spot in the West. The same team that beat them in Week 7. The Blasters came to the table ready for their rematch against the Spinners, and they would ultimately win Saturday night’s showdown 16-5.

But an undefeated week was not meant to be, as the Blasters finished their weekend with an 8-13 loss to the Atlanta Blazers. And yet, this was still perhaps the most productive week of the season for the Blasters, who hope they can use their success this week as a launch pad for a potential playoff push.

“We’re currently in last place, and everybody else is really motivated to show what we have,” Wang said on Friday. “I mean, we are one of the most dangerous teams in the league.”

That success started at the very start, with Jinbao Ma (2740). Despite a winless Week 7, Blasters coach Tim Wang trusted him to lead off each of the Blasters’ three matches. Ma proved that his coach was correct, sweeping New York’s Koki Niwa (2753) and Los Angeles’Ľubomír Pištej before taking two games from Atlanta’s Yuya Oshima (2775) on Sunday. Each of those dominant wins set the tone for the Blasters this weekend, and they kept their momentum ahead of their 2-1 record.

“His motivation was high, and I think everybody knows what kind of player he can play as,” Wang said on Friday. “I think he showed what he can do in this first match.”

It’s hard not to tie the Blasters’ success this season to the status of Taehyun Kim (2750), last season’s Men’s co-MVP. Kim underwent a procedure on his foot that ruled him out of the Blasters’ Week 1 matches in September, and he made his Season 3 debut during Week 6 with a noticeable limp. 

Kim played both singles and doubles in all three of his matches in Los Angeles, and he looked comfortable whenever he scrambled around the table. That’s a massive step forward from where he was just a month ago, much to the delight of his team.

“I still don’t think that he’s at his top form yet,” Wang said.

It’s even more difficult not to tie the Blasters’ success to superstar Lily Zhang, and that includes this week. She won seven of her nine singles matches for the third consecutive week, including sweeps of New York’s Choi Haeeun (2562) on Friday and Atlanta’s Andrea Todorovic on Sunday. 

Zhang performed at a similar level to that of her last two weeks. After one of those weeks, she left the table as MLTT’s Female Player of the Week. In the other, she became the first woman to ever top the league’s official power rankings list.

“Lily has been very crucial for us this entire season,” Wang said. “I think she is the backbone of our team.”

Everyone else stepped up this weekend to give the Blasters a boost. Elsayed Lashin (2755), a two-time winner of Male Player of the Week this season, took two of three games from Yiran Wu (2692), Alexandre Robinot and Braxton Chang (2596). Baek Kwang-il (2608) won five of the six doubles games he participated in, and Senura Silva (2600) took over on Sunday to challenge Tom Feng (2657) and Kayama Yu (2765).

The Blasters’ position looks a lot better than it did prior to this weekend. They now sit as the 4th seed in the West with a 5-7 record and 117 points. They still have a ways to go before securing a top-two seed, but if they continue winning, they can look back at Week 8 as the moment they started blasting off into the postseason.

“The chemistry is starting to come together,” Wang said. “So yeah, let’s see how it goes.”

Atlanta Blazers:

When we last saw the Atlanta Blazers (2-7, 75 points), they defeated the Bay Area Blasters 12-9 in Week 6 to win their first match in team history. They earned their second win in team history on Sunday, with a 13-8 victory over the Bay Area Blasters to conclude their Week 8.

But in between those two wins came two losses. The Blazers fell to the Los Angeles Spinners 14-7 on Friday before falling apart in their Golden Game against New York for a 9-12 defeat. But although they lost two of the three matches they played this weekend, the Blasters look like a much stronger team than they were in Weeks 2 and 6.

Many of their players had some of the strongest performances they’ve had all season. Kayama Yu won six of his nine singles games, including a sweep of New York’s Koki Niwa on Saturday, and he won five of his eight doubles games alongside Tom Feng and Jiwei Xia (2607). Andrea Todorovic completed the first sweep of her MLTT career against New York’s Choi Haeeun, a two-time recipient of the Female Player of the Week award.

Yuya Oshima, the top pick in the 2025 MLTT Draft, won six games against Los Angeles’ Ľubomír Pištej, New York’s Yiran Wu and Bay Area’s Jinbao Ma. Braxton Chang made his MLTT debut while filling in for Jeet Chandra, and he took a game from Bay Area’s Elsayed Lashin and Los Angeles’ Kou Lei.

The Blazers still sit at the bottom of the East, but they’re beginning to close the gap between them and the fourth-place Florida Crocs (3-6, 79 points). And with a wide-open East Division, a strong 2026 could very well send the Blazers to the playoffs for the first time in team history.

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New York Slice:

This wasn’t a weekend for the New York Slice (7-5, 125 points) to remember.

Things went south immediately for the Slice on Friday. They couldn’t touch the Blasters for the first nine games of that match, and they entered the halfway point before putting even one point on the board. After that start, there wasn’t much the Slice could do to keep the Blasters from winning that match 18-3. 

As New York entered Saturday’s Golden Game against Atlanta with a two-point deficit, it looked as though they were in for another difficult loss. But they wouldn’t let that happen. Twenty-one points later, the Slice reminded the league why they’re one of the East’s most dangerous teams with a thrilling Golden Game comeback to defeat the Blazers, 12-9.

That win was a brief reprieve before Sunday’s match against the Los Angeles Spinners, whom they had defeated in an all-time match during Week 5. A repeat wouldn’t happen in the rematch, though, as the Slice ended their Week 8 on a 5-16 loss.

New York did not appear to be at full strength this weekend, especially superstar Koki Niwa. The second overall pick in the 2025 MLTT Draft lost all six of his Singles 1 games to Bay Area’s Jinbao Ma and Atlanta’s Kayama Yu before a fever kept him out of Sunday’s match against Los Angeles.

Choi Haeeun’s Week 8 did not fare much better. The two-time Female Player of the Week competed in all of her singles matches, but she was swept by Bay Area’s Lily Zhang and Atlanta’s Andrea Todorovic before taking two of three from Los Angeles’ Matilda Ekholm.

With that said, there was still plenty to like from the Slice. Wenzhang Tao was the sole bright spot in New York’s meltdown against the Blasters, taking two of three games against former teammate Taehyun Kim. He followed that up by winning two of three doubles games on Saturday against Yu and Jiwei Xia and two of three singles games against Ľubomír Pištej on Sunday.

Haocheng Wang won all three of his singles games against Atlanta’s Braxton Cheng on Saturday and scored ten points across his three Golden Games. Five of those points came during the Slice’s remarkable comeback against Atlanta on Saturday.

New York had an opportunity to add to their East-leading record. Instead, the Spinners took a nosedive down to the third seed behind Princeton and Carolina after suffering their first losing weekend in team history.

The Slice are not out of the count just yet. They’re still the East’s most proven team even after this past week. But they cannot afford many more 1-2 weekends, or else they might find themselves in a vulnerable position once the season wraps up.

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