Champion Table Tennis Player
At the age of 14 years, Violeta Nesukaitis became Canadian Women’s Table Tennis Champion. When only 13 years old, she had already competed in the Toronto Table Tennis Club Championship, Women’s Division, Open, and won! Violeta’s father, born in Alvitas, Lithuania, leaving his homeland in 1944 to escape oppression, was her coach when she joined the table tennis elites of the world, in 1966, winning the U.S. National Women’s Division Championship, the first non-American to do so. Winner of four North American Open Championships (1966, ’68, ’70, and ’73), she travelled to Peking, China, 1971, with Team Canada, the first foreign table tennis team to be invited to play in China. Ranked nationally until she retired in 1976, Violeta Nesukaitis, in this 1971 view, below, in Peking, is seen with Chou En-Lai, China’s Premier. Photograph, left, demonstrates Violeta’s strength and power at the height of her career. [Photos, courtesy J. Nesukaitis]