Portland Paddlers' Hampus Nordberg Earns MLTT Week 14 Player of the Week Honor

Hampus Nordberg of the Portland Paddlers earned Major League Table Tennis Week 14 Player of the Week honors after a standout set of performances during the week that concluded March 16, with MLTT recognizing him on March 18, 2026.

The timing of the award lands at a charged moment for Portland. The Paddlers had not lost a single match in 2026 heading into Week 15, and an MLTT editorial published March 18 noted that a single win this weekend would push them past the 11-point threshold needed to lock up the league's top seed. Nordberg has made clear the team has that target squarely in its sights. "We have been talking about [the No. 1 seed] a lot," he said. "We have a good opportunity to get us into the history books of MLTT."

Nordberg was Coach Christian Lillieroos's first overall pick when the coach assembled the Paddlers' eight-person roster. He is one of two Swedes on a team that also includes two players from Korea, one from Japan, and two Americans. That international composition reflects MLTT's broader model: a 10-team national league where four clubs converge on a single city each weekend and play across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with each player appearing in one match per day. Lillieroos selects six players from the Paddlers' roster for each weekend event, and league rules require at least one of those six to be female.

The match format itself is compact but demanding: five games structured as two singles, one doubles, and two more singles. It's a format Nordberg has taken to enthusiastically since arriving in the Pacific Northwest. "It's a very special, special league to play here in the U.S., and I've been enjoying it a lot. A fun and new crazy experience," he said.

Nordberg has also been an outspoken advocate for table tennis's growing profile in the U.S., crediting the 2024 Paris Olympics as a turning point for the sport worldwide, particularly through the run of fellow Swede Truls Möregårdh, who won silver in the men's singles event. That visibility, Nordberg believes, helped propel the kind of mainstream interest that makes a professional league like MLTT viable in American markets.

Portland's Week 14 recap lands in a feed alongside significant league-wide drama. The Week 14 recap noted two teams clinched playoff spots that weekend, with one berth still open heading into the final weekend. On the other side of the bracket, Princeton is chasing that last available spot in Week 15, giving the final weekend of MLTT's regular season genuine stakes across multiple markets.

For Nordberg and the Paddlers, the Player of the Week award is confirmation of what the standings already suggest: this is the team to beat going into the postseason.