USATT Inducts Hazinski, Liu and Nir-Kistler Into 2026 Hall of Fame

Three careers, three different blueprints for what American table tennis looks like when it works. USA Table Tennis announced its 2026 Hall of Fame class on April 1, inducting Mark Hazinski, Juan Liu and Noga Nir-Kistler into a group USATT described as having "earned induction through sustained excellence, international achievement, and lasting contributions to the sport in the United States."

At 15, Mark Hazinski became the youngest player in USATT history to earn a spot on the U.S. Men's National Team. That record was the starting point. He followed it with four Under-22 Men's Singles national titles, four Men's Doubles championships, a 2006 Mixed Doubles crown and the 2003 USATT Player of the Year award. A 2004 Athens Olympian who appeared at three Pan American Games, Hazinski was trained by Olympic Head Coach Dan Seemiller and Junior Coach Mark Nordby before spending three years competing in professional leagues in Germany and Sweden. He spent three years coaching at the North Texas Table Tennis Center and currently serves as the U.S. National Team Men's Coach, making him one of the few Hall inductees still directly building the program he once played for.

Juan Liu's path to the Hall ran through Tokyo. The left-handed, two-wing attacker represented the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics and became only the third U.S. player in Olympic history to reach the women's singles round of 16. Born in China, Liu had previously topped the USATT rankings with a peak rating of 2715 and won the U.S. Women's Singles Championship in 2018. Her contributions to coaching and development programs add a second dimension to an induction case that mirrors exactly what USATT says it values: competitive results alongside talent pipeline work.

Noga Nir-Kistler's induction is posthumous. She died on December 14, 2021, at age 42, but her record in Paralympic and grassroots table tennis is difficult to match. Born in Israel, Nir-Kistler moved to Pennsylvania at 17 and became a U.S. citizen, eventually earning the top ranking among U.S. Paralympic women's table tennis players and eighth in the world in the Class 5 division. She won two silver medals at the 2007 Parapan American Games in Rio de Janeiro and competed at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics while managing reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a nerve condition affecting her left hand. She also won a Pennsylvania State Championship competing directly against able-bodied former champions. After switching sports, she won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Paralympics in the 200-meter breaststroke. As club president of the Allentown Lehigh Valley Area Table Tennis Club, she built a program explicitly designed to welcome disabled players alongside standing competitors, grassroots work that the Hall of Fame recognition now places in the sport's permanent record.

The April 1 announcement also referenced a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Hall's annual recognition. For Hazinski, Liu and Nir-Kistler, the broader significance of the class is what each career demonstrates: that national table tennis success runs on Olympians and coaches and community builders working in the same direction, and that all three belong in the same sentence.