Table tennis, anyone?

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 23, 2006 | by Steve Herendeen - STAFF WRITER

At the annual block party tournament, you tear everyone up with your big spins, flashy backhands and monster kills. When opponents lay their paddles down after being swamped by you in another table tennis confrontation, they bow and call you "King Pong."

So you've got game ... or do you? Well, it's easy enough to find out.

There are numerous table tennis clubs in the Bay Area - from Berkeley, Oakland and Concord to Livermore Valley and down to Milpitas. There are also clubs in Palo Alto and Mountain View, among others.

Most offer beginning, intermediate and expert competition and many have junior and adult training programs.

And some - like the 34-year-old Concord Table Tennis Club - hold rousing round-robin tournaments each week. There, top-notch players wielding $150 blades (they're not called "paddles" anymore) send 40mm celluloid orange balls flying over a 6-inch net mounted on a 5- by-9-foot table at 100 mph. Spin returns can go as high as 10,000 rpm.

And if you still insist you're the second coming of Forrest Gump, well, there's a very competitive table tennis league that includes teams from Palo Alto, Concord, Mountain View, Milpitas and two from Oakland.

But beware. Those teams are stocked with the best the clubs have to offer. The Concord team is comprised of blade magicians such as Olympic hopeful Freddie Gabriel, junior national team member Trevor Runyan and Phillip Lim, Atha Fong, Horace Cheng and Thinh Mac. Just watching them practice against each other is like watching the Olympics.

"They'd make Forrest Gump sick," chuckled Hackie Honda, 74, a table tennis ambassador who runs the Hercules TTC and helps out a couple of days a week at the Concord club.

The origin

Table tennis originated in Europe or the United States (depending upon who you believe) as a social game back in the mid-19th century. It has been known as Gossima, Whiff-Whaff and, of course, Ping- Pong.

The term "table tennis" came into being out of necessity when Parker Brothers of Monopoly fame greedily copyrighted the name Ping- Pong in the 1930s, even though the company doesn't even list any sort of Ping-Pong game among its offerings.

"Parker Brothers wasn't very considerate of others," lamented Tom Miller, director of the small Livermore Table Tennis Club and an international umpire in the sport. "But Ping-Pong or tennis ... people look at it the same as `garbage collector' and `sanitary engineer.' "

The game's popularity zoomed upward beginning in the 1920s, and it is now the second-most played sport in the world behind soccer.

Clubbing

One of the largest and most successful table tennis clubs in the East Bay is the Concord club, founded 34 years ago by Phil Schafer. The club, which calls the Pleasant Hill Christian School gym home, has 150 members of all abilities and is steadily growing.

The CTTC gets players from all over. Players come from as far away as San Jose and Sacramento to play in the expansive gym, which houses 17 tables. The club is open four nights per week (Thursdays are reserved for the round-robin tournaments) and draws 40 or more players each evening.

Schafer's club was rejuvenated in the early 1990s by the development of a standout junior program run by Bill Lui. "We were faced with the situation where (the long-time members) were rapidly aging," Schafer said. "The junior program regenerated us because as the kids came, the parents came. This is a sport in which the whole family can participate."

Schafer has the air-conditioned gym (that's a bonus, because table tennis is hard work) set up with six "challenge" tables at the front of the building. The other tables are used for clinics, private instruction and open play. The cost is $5 per day for adults and $2 for kids. Players showing up for the first time play free that night.

While the membership is largely male - perhaps due to the surprising aggressiveness of table tennis - the club is doing its best to encourage women to come out.

Lisa Assoni of Walnut Creek and El Cerrito's Aiko Iseyama are regulars. They don't participate in the round-robin tournament, instead contenting themselves by playing each other and getting a workout.

"I started because I needed exercise and this is very fast action and fun," said Iseyama, a member for nine years. Assoni, a self- proclaimed "pretty good basement player" when she was a kid, finds the focus required to play table tennis one of the best things about the sport.

"You really have to concentrate," she said. "There might be something at home that isn't going well, but you just forget about everything when you come here to play."

The highlight of every week is the round-robin tournament in which groups of about five players compete against each other based on their abilities. The format is the best 3-of-5 games to 11 points. The one with the most wins gets bragging rights and a chance to move up to a higher-level table.

Jim Runyan, 49, teaches physics and earth science at College Park High School in Pleasant Hill. He started coming to the CTTC 10 years ago when his son Trevor began taking lessons.