PARIS – 21 minutes was all it took. Team USA para table tennis star Ian Seidenfeld went out of his second Paralympic Games with a whimper.

Using a barrage of short shots that took advantage of Seidenfeld’s limited wingspan, Italian Matteo Parenzan moved on to the men’s singles MS6 gold medal match. He defeated Seidenfeld in three games, 11-7, 11-2, 11-8, ending Team USA’s run at para table tennis and saddling the reigning gold medalist with bronze.

Seidenfeld developed a paddle extension that allows him to better defend against short serves. He’s the only one who uses it, but Parenzan had a strategy to weaponize it.

“He played a lot of short serves,” Seidenfeld said of Parenzan’s gameplan. “Then he kept the second ball short as well. So I couldn’t make a great shot and then I’d have to come back to hit with the extension or be able to get it off fast enough. I just wasn’t able to get it off fast enough.”

Thanks to his stellar execution, Parenzan won 21 of 26 points on his own serve. The inability to break service put Seidenfeld in difficult positions, having to dig out of large deficits.

After losing the second game 11-2 and falling behind in the 4-1 in the third, Seidenfeld used a timeout. While he tried to settle down, the U.S. crowd took initiative. After the Minnesotan took the next two points, chants of “USA” emerged within South Paris Arena, growing louder and louder before every point.

“It gave me a shot,” he said. “I know it affected him a little bit, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capitalize on some of those points to kind of draw it back.”

He kept clawing back, breaking Parenzan’s serve three times in the game along, and cutting the margin to a single point on multiple occasions. However, he couldn’t summit the mountain, unable to even up the game or win three consecutive points.

The blueprint is now established, setting a clear vision for how Seidenfeld can improve with 2028 in mind.

“We’ll definitely work on returning the short serves and playing that type of style a little bit more,” he said. “I’m a much better player than (Parenzan) is at almost every other shot, so I don’t need to improve the other shots as much as just getting those short serves back and being able to play off of it.”

Seidenfeld swept his first two matches, defeating Great Britain’s Martin Perry and Spain’s Alvaro Valera, but couldn’t rekindle the same energy that helped him through the first stages.

“In the last two matches, I didn’t hear anything,” he said of the crowd stomping its feet and making noise. “I was so focused. But this one, I seemed to be not so much in the moment.”

At 23 and 21 years old respectively, this will almost definitely not be the last that Seidenfeld and Parenzan see of each other. Whether the next meeting is in Los Angeles or before that, Seidenfeld is determined to not be defeated the same way.