No ‘garage game’
I’ve played some serious ping-pong in my day. I’ve broken paddles, whipped a few at the wall, started fights and even broken a table or two. I’ve won all the marbles, and walked away from night rounds of beer-pong the victor. Yeah, I like to think I’m pretty good at ping-pong. But I suck at table tennis.
I know this because I visited Portland State’s club team in the Stott Center the other day and played a few games. In the Rake Room they separate the men from the boys. There it ain’t no backyard game, and it surely ain’t no hobby. Down there, table tennis is a sport.
”It’s the second most popular sport in the world [behind soccer]," team captain Mark Blinder told me. And while it is second in popularity, table tennis ranks first in worldwide participation (over 40 million competitive players, according to the International Olympic Committee). “People in America see it as a garage game, but in other countries like China and India, it’s huge."
Looking around the room it’s not hard to see that Mark is right about the world’s love of the game. At every table, players from far-away places like Turkey, Nepal and Mongolia slice shots back and forth. In the basement of the PSU Rec Center, table tennis is bringing people and countries together.
Mark hails from Israel and has been playing table tennis since he was young (though he had to take a break while serving his army duty). He told me the story of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy": In the 1970s, at the invitation of China, then-President Nixon sent a U.S. team to compete as a sign of goodwill, and to open a more friendly dialogue between the two countries.
The team that PSU has assembled from far and wide has worked its way to the top of the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association’s (NCTTA) Northwest Division. Midway through the 2006-07 season, PSU is 4-0 in team play. Division opponents include the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, Lewis and Clark College, and Oregon State.
Team captain Blinder appears confident about winning the division and moving on to nationals. “[PSU] won the division four straight years until last year." And though the 2005-06 season failed to send the entire team, Blinder and Suha Ardahan represented PSU in national singles competition.
And though table tennis is a club sport, it doesn’t mean Blinder or any of his teammates lack seriousness. “We receive about $4,000 from the school each year," Blinder explained. “We have very good equipment and the best facilities in the division." The university’s support has helped the team establish the Stott Center as the site for most tournaments, giving the PSU team the comfort of home field.
But it won’t be long, Blinder said, until table tennis becomes a full-fledged NCAA sport.
”What needs to happen is for there to be 40 schools across the country with both men’s and women’s teams. The men’s teams are there," Blinder said. “I think the number of women’s teams is somewhere in the mid-to-high 20s." He said the number of teams is definitely on the rise. The University of Texas Wesleyan even offers table tennis scholarships.
PSU got a pretty big gift of its own when Sean O’Neill recently moved to town and began coaching the club. O’Neill is a five-time U.S. men’s singles champion, two-time Olympic Team member, and five-time U.S. World Team member.
”We’re really lucky to have [O’Neill]," Blinder said.
And soon would come my chance to see what their coach had taught them. I borrowed a paddle and found my opponent: Suha Ardahan, the outspoken Turk and team joker.
We rallied for a bit and I tried to shake the rust off. Suha served up some easy balls for me to feast on, but, doing my damnedest, I couldn’t send one past him.
”Your form is wrong. You don’t want to bend your wrist like that," Suha said, showing me the proper way. But it was too late to start thinking about changing my game now. At this point, it was go with what you know.
I told him not to go easy on me, and when he figured out I might print the scores he didn’t.
I saw the ball, sometimes, and swung where I thought it was and often got nothing but air. I was lucky if I swung at all though, as some of Suha’s smashes were just totally out of reach. I lurched and nearly fell over. “You’ve got to move your feet first," he said, laughing.
Settling down a bit, I scored a few points, but due more to Suha’s errors than my offensive prowess. In the end, he swept me 11-4, 11-3, 11-1. Still, I was just happy I didn’t get shut out. My shallow bliss wouldn’t last long as Mark would blank me in the next match.
I didn’t even want to think about what might’ve happened had I played Pemba Sherpa. The guy is an assassin and holds the paddle like a knife.
Rather than being totally humiliated by Sherpa, I decided I’d be better off just sticking to good ol’ ping-pong in the garage. When players start calling it “table tennis," the game changes. “One half of the people who came to tryouts never came back because they got beat so badly," Blinder said.
And to my dismay, I was one of them.
