Lily Zhang
Lily Ann Zhang is an American table tennis player who competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London with teammates Ariel Hsing and Erica Wu. She also competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio with teammates Zheng Jiaqi and Wu Yue. She is a six-time US national champion in women's singles, having won in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022. In 2011, she was a bronze medalist in women's singles and women's team at the Pan American Games and won the women's doubles title at the Qatar Peace and Sport Cup. She is a member of the United States National Women's team. She has been ranked #2 in the cadet world ranking and #5 in the junior world ranking.
Life
Lily Zhang was born on June 16, 1996, in Redwood City, California, to Chinese parents. Her family lived on the campus of Stanford University, where her father was then a mathematics professor. Zhang played table tennis with her parents while she was growing up.She graduated from Palo Alto High School in 2014 before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley. After her first year, Zhang took a year off to train for the 2016 Olympic Games. For a part of her gap year, she trained and played in the Austrian league and trained at her home club, ICC.
Zhang is featured in the documentary Top Spin.
She is sponsored by JOOLA Table Tennis.
U.S. career
When Zhang was 7 years old, Dennis Davis, the president and head coach of the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club and the North American representative of the junior commission of International Table Tennis Federation, began training her. When she was 11, Zhang made the U.S. Cadet Team. By age 12, Zhang became the youngest player to ever make the U.S. Women's Team, and when she was 13 years old, she was the #2 ranked Junior Girls' table tennis player in the United States.At the 2010 and 2011 U.S. National Championships, Zhang won the title in the junior girls' event and was the runner-up in women's singles. In 2012, she won her first national championship in women's singles, beating defending champion Ariel Hsing in 7 games.
She plays for the Bay Area Blasters in Major League Table Tennis, which started in 2023, and was the first female player to top its power rankings.
International career
2011 Pan American Games
Zhang participated in the 2011 Pan American Games where she played both as an individual and as part of the United States team. The US team won a bronze medal and she also won a bronze medal in women's singles.Qatar Peace and Sport Cup
On November 22, 2011, Zhang and Russian player Anna Tikhomirova won the Women's Doubles title at the Qatar Peace and Sport Cup.2012 Olympics
After qualifying for the last singles position on the 2012 United States Olympic Team by beating Canada's Anqi Luo in five games in the North American Olympic Trials, Zhang went into the London Olympics as the youngest player in the table tennis competition and was seeded 49th. In the first round, Zhang lost in straight games to Croatian player Cornelia Molnar.The United States team play second-seeded Japan in the first round of proceedings. Zhang lost to Sayaka Hirano in straight games and teamed with Erica Wu in the doubles to lose to Kasumi Ishikawa and Ai Fukuhara, also in straight games.