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February 27, 2006 Vol. 77,
no. 7S
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| SPIN
MEISTER:
Kenny Schang plays table tennis at the Cal Recreational Sports Facility
with Erik Tsou (not pictured). Schang says he began playing
as a seven-year-old in his hometown of Paris, France. He joined
the Cal team last fall. Tsou joined at the same time. He was
a tennis player before but converted to table tennis, he says,
because “it’s easier on the body.” (Rachel
Shafer photo)
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It’s
Ping-Pong, but not really
Engineers put their own spin on Cal’s top-ranked table tennis team
Forget football. Forget basketball. In competitive table tennis, UC
Berkeley is a contender. The team is ranked first in northern California
according to the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association. Led
by U.S. national table tennis member and Berkeley architecture student
Jackie Lee, Cal is 4-0, ahead of second-ranked UC Davis and third-ranked
Stanford.
Two members of this team are engineering students: EECS sophomore
Kenny Schang and BioE junior Erik Tsou. They took time out of their
practice
one Thursday afternoon to explain their sport to Engineering News.
First off, it is a sport. “There’s this misconception that
you don’t get exercise playing table tennis,” says Schang,
whose individual record is 5-1. “Your brain is working and your
feet are working. You’re always adjusting to the movement of
the ball.”
“You sweat a lot, especially in practice, because you’re thinking
so much,” adds Tsou (3-1). “When I’m playing, I’m always
trying to outsmart the other guy.”
While table tennis players don’t conjure up the idea of a typical athlete,
the sport is demanding. It requires refined physical and mental skill, say the
engineers, and dedicated training. Cal players meet once or twice a week to train.
A typical practice involves footwork, looping, slicing, and blocking drills,
service and return practice, as well as game-playing. Like tennis, a key strategy
is manipulating the ball’s spin.
“To get better, you need to play over and over,” says Tsou. “Success
in table tennis is based on repetition. And reflex.”
And respect. Though both consider table tennis a fun hobby and neither
harbor Olympic aspirations, the engineers take issue with those who dismiss
it as
a kid’s game. Schang says he’s even had to challenge college friends
to a match because they made the mistake of telling him he just plays Ping-Pong.
In the ensuing game of table tennis, he won.
For more information, go to www.nctta.org/teams.html.
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