London Olympics are latest stop for Westridge’s Erica Wu

At 16, Erica Wu has accumulated enough stamps on her passport to make even seasoned travelers jealous.

She’s crisscrossed the country and other parts of the world, for table tennis tournaments and now will make the ultimate excursion, to London, as a member of the United States national table tennis team.

“It’s still kind of surreal,” Wu said. “Almost everyday I think of how close I was to not making it, and how lucky I am.”

Wu’s journey to becoming an Olympic athlete has taken her to Colombia, Slovakia and the Middle East for the world junior championships; Russia, Germany and the Netherlands for the world championships; and countless other trips throughout the continent. Though none had more at stake than a weekend excursion in April to Cary, N.C. for the North American Olympic Trials.

It was on the eve of the final day of that tournament, on April 22, that Wu learned she needed one more win to qualify for the remaining spot on the Olympic roster. That match pitted her against Judy Hugh, a childhood friend.

Wu logged onto YouTube and searched for video clips on Hugh. She jotted notes and devised a strategy. The next morning she studied those notes and practiced her technique.

“If you think about it,” Wu said, “it’s kind of hard to know that if you make it, you’re disqualifying your friend. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking about that.

“I was pretty nervous before that match. Really, really nervous. And I was fighting for the last spot on the team. It was just that one chance, and if I messed up, that was it. If I wanted to make the team, I’d have to wait another four years [to try again]. And a lot can happen during that time. So I was thinking, ‘This is it right here.’”

Wu lost the first set, before rallying back to secure a 4-2 win.

“I think of those moments where it was really close,” Wu said, “and I just start sweating.”

Since qualifying for the Olympics, Wu said that little has changed.

Her friends and classmates at Westridge School treat her the same, though largely because some of the students were unaware that table tennis was an Olympic sport.

But that changed, for the most part, a couple weeks after she qualified. That’s when Wu hosted a demonstration in the school’s gymnasium to showcase the sport. The half-hour ceremony, in part to honor Wu’s achievement, drew the awe of the crowd, particularly with the velocity in which the ball traveled. Afterward, some students approached Wu to have her autograph their ping-pong balls.

Melissa Lin and Victoria Corbisiero, who, along with Wu, helped launch a ping pong club on campus, were also in attendance.

While some students have been afraid to compete with Wu because of her accomplishments, Lin said that she’s been very generous in helping promote the sport at school.

“What I really admire about her is that she’s really, really humble about how incredible she is at ping pong,” Lin said. “She would always seem excited to play ping pong with me, even if it was just the two of us, and teach me new things.

“And it’s always in the back of my mind: I’m playing with an Olympian right now. But she’s really chill about it. It didn’t feel like I was playing with someone so much better than me, because she was so encouraging with me, even when I messed up.”

With the school year over, Wu’s summer workload has picked up a little, but not much more than usual. She still practices about three hours a day, in the same El Monte training facility, against her practice partner for the last nine months, Jay Yuan.

She wasted little time gearing up for tournaments. In fact, she competed in one the day after final exams were over. Usually, she said she does not practice during finals week, but this time she made an exception for the North American Cup in Toronto.

After wrapping up her sophomore year by taking final exams for AP Europen history, honors Algebra 2, Chinese, English, Chemistry and Orchestra, Wu left school that Friday at 11:30 a.m. to catch a 2 p.m. flight. She arrived in Toronto that night at 11 and was scheduled to compete the following morning.

“It was interesting because I feel the higher you go, level-wise, you have to be able to just play like that,” Wu said. “You can’t have the perfection conditions, so I just look at it as good training. Before, usually, I’m the kind of person where, if I’m tired, I don’t really play well. And that’s bad because you could be tired whenever. And if that happens to be at a really important tournament, it could go bad.

So it was good preparation heading into the Olympics — plus I did well.”

Wu wrapped up the two-day tournament in fourth place, losing to her Olympic teammate, Ariel Hsing, 4-2.

Since then, Wu has split time practicing for the Olympics while traveling to tournaments in Brazil, Michigan and New Jersey, and a training camp in Manchester. While the initial thought of qualifying for the Olympics overwhelmed her with joy, Wu said that part of her still feels like she hasn’t made the team. Thought she doesn’t expect that feeling to linger too long.

“It was completely a dream when I made it,” she said. “But I don’t think it’ll hit me until we have team processing in London. That’s when we’ll get our outfits and our opening ceremony uniforms and the apparel you have to wear in the athlete’s village. I think getting that stuff, wearing the same thing as the other athletes and wearing “U.S.” on my shirt, that’s when it’s really going to hit me that I’m a part of the team.”