How Nikhil Kumar Still Anchors UC Berkeley One Year After Graduating
By Luke Scotchie
NCTTA Press Committee Member
ROCKFORD, Ill. — Nikhil Kumar leaps from his seat behind Table 2 and claps his hands. He wears a navy UC Berkeley shirt that resembles the uniforms Sid Naresh and Jerry Fung wore in Friday's Men’s Doubles semifinal match. Kumar's shirt has a major difference, though, and it’s especially noticeable when he advises his former teammates in between games. The word “CHAMPION” reaches from shoulderblade to shoulderblade in gold letters, a not-so-subtle reminder of the legacy he left behind at UC Berkeley last year.
Champion of what? Take your pick. He’s the reigning Men’s Singles champion at the NCTTA Championships. He and Naresh earned the Men’s Doubles trophy in 2025. He was the key piece of UC Berkeley’s Coed Teams-winning powerhouse that same year. UC Berkeley won three of a possible five events last season, and Kumar’s fingerprints were all over those trophies.
He’s since graduated from UC Berkeley, but that hasn’t stopped him from attending the 2026 NCTTA Championships. He’s serving his school this year as a coach, dispensing championship-winning wisdom to a new-look UC Berkeley team that he hasn’t fully left yet.
“[My] team spirit’s always going to be there for sure,” Kumar said. “[I’m] trying to support them, trying to start some sort of a continuation from the results I was able to produce last year, and hopefully have the team continue those results.”
That team is grateful to have Kumar on the sidelines. He earned much of his success by seeing every game several steps ahead, and they felt it was impressive how he managed to stay in the present while thinking about future points.
Now, he no longer has to perform that balancing act, which means the players he coaches don’t have to, either.
“He’s a tactical genius,” Naresh said. “As a player, when we play doubles, he’s always telling me what to do. So as a coach, when he’s just fully analyzing the match, he does a really good job of explaining what to do.”
Kumar doesn’t think they need his advice, though. He was there when many of those players won the Coed Teams championship last year, and he knows that win was no fluke.
“I don’t feel I need to dispel any wisdom onto Sid, and Ved, and the rest of our teammates,” Kumar said. “I feel like we have that understanding already; we’re kind of already on the same page in a sense, but [I’m] there to kind of just be moral support.”
That moral support seems to be working. Naresh and Fung won the Men’s Doubles title on Friday. They earned an automatic bye in the Coed Teams Tournament, and their dreams of repeating as champions appear very realistic as of Saturday morning. UC Berkeley is on pace to continue its dominant run at the NCTTA Championships, without the star of last year’s show competing with them.
Well, he’s still competing with them. He’s just clapping and cheering from the sidelines.
Featured in pic is dedicated and decorated California alum Nikhil Kumar coaching his former teammates with positive vibes (Photo credits to Dennis Yanga)
About 2026 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and GoRockford (Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau). The event crowns national champions in Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, Men’s/Coed Teams, and Women’s Teams and Collegiate Peakapong Singles.
PongSpace, Peaka Pong, Major League Table Tennis, Nittaku and Paddle Palace will sponsor the event.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday, April 10th on https://www.nctta.org/champs/2026/video.html
About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively to promote the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes elite intercollegiate competitions throughout North America. www.nctta.org