EUSA Insider:

Albert Piwonski

Age:                  25
Place of Birth:  Berlin, Germany
University:        Technical University of Berlin (GER)
Sport:                Table Tennis                                                                                     Published 24 March 2020

How and why did you get involved in Table Tennis?
I started playing Table Tennis in a club when I was 10 years old. There was a real Table Tennis hype going through my elementary school – nowadays comparable with the hype of playing Table Tennis in the hipster bars of Berlin. In my class almost all the boys joined the local Table Tennis club. I could play for hours and couldn’t get enough of this small white ball.

What do you study, and how do you balance your study, training and competition?
I study electrical engineering and focus on the numerical approximation of boundary value problems. I adapt my training to the competition schedule. But I pay the most attention to my studies (of Sobolev spaces). It is also beneficial to combine the knowledge of the curl operator of vector analysis (also called rotation) with the own game system.



Tell us about your experiences at previous EUSA events…
The EUG2020 is already my third participation in an international competition for students (Camerino 2019 in Italy and Geneva 2015 in Switzerland). I like to look back on the beautiful cities, beautiful people and beautiful memories.

What are you looking forward to most in Belgrade, and what are your aspirations?
Besides sports, my biggest aim in Belgrade is to understand the Serbian culture: how do Serbians drink coffee? What does ‘cevapcici’ mean and where is the best place for eating them in Belgrade? What is the idea of Slava?

“Enjoy this carefree time and most importantly, don’t forget to smile.”

Why do you think taking part in university sport is important?
Because a strong mind is nothing without a strong body.

What is your most memorable university sport moment?
Last year we had a match against the student’s team of Russia. There was one player who didn’t want the opponent to identify the spin in his service. You can pointedly summarize his service as: You couldn’t see the ball when touching the rubber, you couldn’t see his racket during the service, you couldn’t even see the player during the service. This was a big joke last year in Italy throughout the tournament.



What is your message to European student-athletes like yourself?
Polako, polako! Enjoy this carefree time and most importantly, don’t forget to smile. With this spirit I like to end this interview with an adapted joke from Mitch Hedberg: The depressing thing about Table Tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.

EUSA would like to congratulate Albert for his success at the previous editions of the European Universities Championships and we hope to see him very soon, at the 2020 European Universities Games in Belgrade, Serbia!