Her Serve

By Gia Miller

Photography by Justin Negard

When she was nine years old, Mount Kisco resident Amoolya Menon, now a rising sophomore at Fox Lane High School, competed in her first table tennis U.S. Open. Menon was up 2-1 in the quarterfinals, despite the fact she had only begun competing about one year prior; this was her first major tournament. Her opponent, Emily Goodwin, was the current girls national champion, and Menon had lost the first set, but she won the second and third; matches go to the best of five. She was leading the fourth match 9-8, and since a game is played until a player reaches 11 points, Menon only needed two more points to win the round. Then, the umpire made a bad call.

“I remember the match very vividly,” says her father, Jayadas Chelur. “Since it was the quarterfinals and an official USA Table Tennis event, there was an umpire at the table. The other girl gave a good forehand and missed the table, so the umpire signaled to Amoolya’s side that it was her point.” 

“It’s now 10-8, and Amoolya was just one point away from winning,” he continues. “But Amoolya stopped the play to tell the umpire that the ball hit the side on the way out, and he needed to reverse the point, making it 9-9. This meant the game could go either way. If her opponent won, it would be 2-2, and the fifth set would be anybody’s guess.”

Menon scored the next two points and won the game 11-9. She moved on to the semifinals, but she lost. However, since there was no playoff round, Menon had a “podium finish” at her first major tournament. Ironically, Menon had spent most of her young life saying “no” to table tennis. 

The first set

As a young girl, Menon enjoyed Indian dancing and classic vocals and playing the cello. She also played soccer, skied and practiced karate (she’s a second-degree black belt). And although several people encouraged her to try table tennis, she was never interested. 

“My uncle played in India at the national level, but he’s not the reason I got into it,” Menon explains. “It happened because of my mom’s close friend, Amir, who owns an academy in India. Both of his daughters play at the national level, and Amir always wanted me to play. But every time he asked, I said, ‘No, who plays table tennis?’ Then he would tell me I was the right height, and I had the right physique for it. I still said no.”

“But one time, just before I turned eight,” she continues, “Amir wanted a specific racket part that he couldn’t get in India. He asked my mom if she could get it for him, and she brought me with her to pick it up at Westchester Table Tennis Center. I met a coach named Ben Nisbet, and he suggested I come to his clinic. He said, ‘Just go once. Just try it. See if you like it.’ So, I went. And I kept coming back; I never stopped.” 

Menon began taking lessons at the center, located in Pleasantville, and enjoyed learning new strokes and improving. She says she wasn’t naturally gifted, but she began watching the sport’s top players, and they inspired her to learn more. The more she learned, the more she improved, and she fell in love with the game. 

“I started playing in January of 2017, and when we went to India that summer, I trained in Amir’s club,” she explains. “It was life-changing because there were so many people my age there. I wasn’t very serious back then. I was just trying something new. But after that summer, I got really, really interested and began to compete.”

Fast forward to December of that year, when Menon attended a holiday party hosted by a player from the Pleasantville club and someone asked her, “What’s your goal with table tennis?”

“I said, ‘I want to be an Olympian,’” she remembers. “I had never told anyone this before. And I remember the look on my dad’s face. He was so surprised.”

Rally to succeed

During that first table tennis summer in India, Menon says her peers were “much better” than her, but now, seven years later, she’s at their level. Menon now trains three to four hours a day and competes almost every weekend. 

Her training begins with 30 minutes of conditioning, including core work, resistance bands, weightlifting and more. Menon’s table tennis coach, 2020 Olympian Kokou Fanny, is also a personal trainer, so he designs her routines. After conditioning, she plays table tennis for about two hours and then spends the remaining time working on her serve. 

Fanny says Menon has developed a “really quick topspin backhand,” which is an attacking shot that increases both the spin and the speed on a ball. As it crosses the net, the ball comes down quickly and sharply, making it harder for the opponent to return the volley. 

“My favorite thing during training is called multiball, where my coach just hits the ball at me really fast and I have to react really quick,” she says. “That’s something I love to do, because I love playing really fast; it’s super fun.”

Another part of Menon’s regular training is to play with other members of Westchester Table Tennis Center. 

“There aren’t many people my age at the club; I’m usually either the only girl or the only kid playing,” she says. “So I play and compete against adults here and in local tournaments. I’ve competed against them since I was eight or nine years old.”

Weekend tournaments are typically two full days of competition. Menon says her first event usually begins around 10 a.m., but she arrives an hour early to warm up and meditate. Her day ends around eight or nine in the evening. Typically, she does have “some time” for a lunch break during these 12-hour days, but if there are delays, then she plays straight through.

A 2021 study out of the University of Zaragoza in Spain found that elite female table tennis athletes’ matches range between nine and 41 minutes, and “some of the world’s top players can even play for a maximum time of 45 minutes.” Menon says her shortest match was just 10 minutes long, and this past November, she played her longest match to date. It was slightly over one hour, and she won 3-2.

“I mainly compete in New York and New Jersey because it’s the most convenient,” she says. “But I also travel for tournaments; I recently competed in San Francisco and Louisiana, and the national championships are in Huntsville, Alabama, this July. I have to miss quite a bit of school, but thankfully, my teachers have been super flexible.”

The Olympic push

Menon came one step closer to her goal of competing in the 2028 Olympics this past spring when she traveled to Louisiana to vie for a spot on this summer’s Olympic team. She says she didn’t expect to qualify, as there were only two spots available; she did it for the experience and came in eighth. 

“I played the current national champion, Amy Wang, and she’s one of the top 30 in the world, so I didn’t have a chance,” Menon explains. “She’s really good; she qualified for the Olympics.”

But on June 15 and 16, Menon won the gold medal in the Girls U15 at the 2024 USATT Northeast Regional Championships. 

Fanny, Menon’s coach, says he believes her dream is possible, but to achieve it, she will need to make an internal shift. 

“If an egg cracks from the inside, it’s a chicken, but if it cracks from the outside, it’s an omelet,” he says. “So, change comes from the inside, and that’s how she’ll improve. No matter what I say, or what a sports psychologist says, it needs to come from inside her.”

Menon believes she can do it. 

“A lot of kids are forced to play table tennis, but once I finally decided to try it, I really wanted to play,” she says. “I think that makes a difference in anything you do.”

This article was published in the July/August 2024 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.