Estee Ackerman, of West Hempstead, a junior at Stern College played in the World Table Tennis Event held at the Westchester Table Tennis Center, in Pleasantville, New York on May 11-15, 2022.

She was defeated in the round of 64 by Chelsea Edghill, four games to two, by scores of 11-6, 8-11, 12-10, 11-8, 8-11, 14-12. In the pivotal sixth game, Ackerman saved two match points and had two game points to force a seventh game but could not overcome Edghill, who represented Guyana in the 2021 Olympics and plays professionally in Portugal. A memorable moment during the tournament was when Ackerman met Dejan Papic, now a coach for Team Canada, who in 2013 when working for the International Table Tennis Association, made a special accommodation for her, by moving her Shabbos match to Sunday. Now nine years later she was able to say thank you again to him and Papic remarked, “how happy he was to see her still competing.”

Ackerman was also defeated in the qualifying round of the mixed doubles to the eventual quarterfinalists. This was the first time a World Table Tennis event was held here in the USA (the prior week was in California), and attracted close to 200 players from 36 countries, including 20 ranked in the top 100 and 17 Olympians. Ackerman has a world rank of #550 and a USA rank of #48.