For Austria’s club will play: HIRANO (JAP) BILENKO (UKR) EKHOLM (SWE) RAKOVAC (CRO) KHETKUEN (THA) MIGOT (FRA) and ZHANG (USA)
SVNÖ Ströck champion of the Austrian Women Table Tennis League in 2014 and Champions League semifinalist in the season 2014/15 was able to entice the 19 year old Californian Lily ZHANG to Austria.
The undertaking of the US-Team-player presents a fairly huge coup for many reasons. Besides the fact that Lily ZHANG is the first US-American in history that made her way to one of the top leagues in Europe she represents in many other ways what is called a “colorful bird”.
At the Olympic Youth Games in Nanjing 2014 she won the bronze medal and therefore plays a big part in the enormous popularity boost of table tennis in the US.
The pretty sports-student represents perfectly the “American way of Life” and wrote sports history also besides her bronze medal in Nanjing.
At the age of 12 she managed as the youngest player of all times to be drafted in the US-national team and in the cadet world ranking she even reached position two.
Now Lily ZHANG (who is currently on position 94 in the World Ranking after she played very few tournaments in the last months) wants to make the next step on her way to a world-class-player.
This leads her to the Werner SCHLAGER Academy in Schwechat where she will be (beginning in September) a permanent training guest. From the WSA it is only a small step to the WSA-partner club SVNÖ Ströck.
In the upcoming season the US-girl will play in the supranational Superleague and the national championships. With Lily ZHANG the squad of SVNÖ Ströck for the season 2015/16 is complete: Sayaka HIRANO (JAP) Tetyana BILENKO (UKR) Matilda EKHOLM (SWE) Lea RAKOVAC (CRO) Tamolwan KHETKUEN (THA) Marie MIGOT (FRA) and Lily ZHANG (USA).
