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Thelma Thall "Tybie" Sommer (born March 12, 1924) is the only living American woman to have won two World Table Tennis Championships. Thall received the USA Table Tennis Lifetime Achievement Award, and is in the Table Tennis Hall of Fame. She says that she excelled "because of her natural athleticism and her ability to analyze and remain objective".


Early career

Thelma Thall was born on March 12, 1924 in
Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...
, and is Jewish. A tomboy as a little girl, she played much football and softball. When she was 13, she won a tennis racket in a Bingo game. Never having had any lessons, and yet seeing the similarities with
softball Softball is a Variations of baseball, variation of baseball, the difference being that it is played with a larger ball, on a smaller field, and with only underhand pitches (where the ball is released while the hand is primarily below the ball) ...
, she represented Livingston Park and won the City Junior Tennis Championship. At the age of 15, she was the Captain of the Varsity Boys' Tennis Team at East High School, the only girl ever to play on the boys' team, let alone be Captain. She graduated 1st in a class of 550 students.


1940s achievements

In 1947, Thall won her first U.S. Open Women's Doubles Championship with her sister Leah. They also won the Canadian Nationals that year. In 1948, Thall and Richard Miles were the first Americans to win the World's Mixed Doubles Title, in Wembley, London, England. In 1949, Thall, as a member of the USA Team, won Singles and Doubles in the Corbillon Cup, a World Championship Event, in
Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...
. That year, Thall and Miles won the English Open Mixed Doubles and Thall, with
Peggy McLean Margaret Rinn McLean (later Folke; July 8, 1926 – March 30, 2013) was an American international table tennis player. Table tennis career McLean won two World Championship medals including a gold medal in the women's team event at the 1949 Worl ...
, won the English Open Women’s Doubles. Thall and her sister Leah won three U.S. National Women's Doubles, in 1947, 1948, and 1949. The Thall sisters also won the Canadian National Doubles in 1947 and 1948.


Later years

Thall was inducted into the United States Table Tennis Association Hall of Fame in 1980. Married with children, she won several Singles Tennis titles in the Northeastern United States. In 1962, she was on the founding board that created the North Shore Women's Tennis League on
Long Island, New York Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
. In 2003, she was honored by that league at the Babe Zaharias Luncheon in New York, for creating the flourishing league, which now has over 2,000 participants. She won Mother/Daughter Tennis Titles in the state of Arizona, as well as the city of Phoenix, with daughter Marilyn, now a USPTA Tennis Pro. In 2005, Thall and her sister received the USA Table Tennis Mark Mathews Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2012, she presented "The Thall Sisters Cup", a newly-created trophy to the winner of the Women's Singles in the U.S. Open Table Tennis Championships. This perpetual trophy lists the winners from 1933 to the present (sister Leah won the US Open 9 times and the World's once; Thelma won the World's twice); while the winner each year gets a small replica, the original sits at the
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in
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. Thall won the first of many Gold Medals in 1987, the inaugural year of the National Senior Olympics. She continues to compete and win Gold Medals, having attended and won the Arizona Senior Olympics, Rocky Mountain Senior Games, the Huntsman Games in Utah, and the National Senior Games with Marilyn.


Honors

Thall received the USA Table Tennis Lifetime Achievement Award, and is in the Table Tennis Hall of Fame. Thall was inducted into the
International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (IJSHOF) () is the international hall of fame for Jewish athletes and special contributors to the world of sport. The purpose of the IJSHOF is to honor Jewish individuals, worldwide, who have accompli ...
in 2017.">Thelma "Tybie" Thall-Sommer
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See also

* List of select Jewish table tennis players *
List of table tennis players This list of table tennis players is alphabetically ordered by surname. The main source of the information included in this page is the official International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) database. More detailed information about their careers is ...
*
List of World Table Tennis Championships medalists A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, bu ...


References


Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thall, Thelma 1924 births Living people American female table tennis players Sportspeople from Columbus, Ohio Jewish American sportspeople 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women 20th-century American sportswomen