Yahoo! Captures the Golden Paddle

The Fifth Annual Table Tennis Tournament drew a strong showing of 45 players from 15 companies across Research Park. As numerous other employees and their families spectated, players ranging from beginners to aficionados vied for individual trophies and medals, as well as the coveted Golden Paddle for the company with the most overall points. Yahoo came out so strongly that it may want to make sure a trophy case is in the plans for its new building. Aside from reclaiming the Golden Paddle from HDF, Yahoo employees earned six out of the nine individual awards. In a clean sweep of the Advanced bracket, Yahoo’s Kyle Jao, Ganesan Mani, and Sriram Viswanathan nabbed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places, respectively. Allie Watfa of Yahoo beat out colleague Balaji Manoharan in the championship game of the intermediate bracket, followed by Saurabh Mishra of Riverbed in 3rd place. Quincey Koziol kept some hardware in the HDF name as he won the beginner’s bracket, followed by Mohana Karunakaran of Yahoo! in 2nd place and Varun Thangavelu of Akuna in 3rd place. A special thank you to Jay Geistlinger of HDF Group, Howard Gerwin of John Deere and Allie Watfa of Yahoo for participating on the Table Tennis Tournament planning committee. Congratulations to all for a fun and exciting evening.

Look through some photos from the event here.