Paddling their way into Olympics

Penn freshman Barbara Wei picked up her first table tennis paddle when she was seven years old. She just wanted to try different things, and a table tennis club was conveniently located near her Maryland home.

Three years later, she was a Junior Olympics champion.

Wei repeated that feat, this time in the under-14 age group in 2002, after which she joined the United States Cadet National Team. Throughout her teenage years, she traveled the country and the world, playing in tournaments while representing the red, white and blue in international competitions. At her peak, she was the second-best American under 18, a rank she held for a while.

Success did not come easily. Although Wei enrolled in a local prep school, she had homework unlike that of any of her peers: She would play table tennis 20 to 30 hours per week to maintain her top form. The upper echelon of table tennis players, she said with affection, is a group of "elite, train-every-day, crazy people."

Now, Wei sounds more like a grizzled veteran than someone who just last March became old enough to vote.

"I think my decision to come to Penn was me telling the world - or myself - that, while I'm not closing my book to table tennis, I'm starting a new chapter, where it's not focused on winning every tournament," Wei said.

"And I feel like I want to try something new, sometimes," she added. "This has been my extracurricular focus for so long, maybe there are other things I missed out on."

Yet she was not going to turn down another shot at international glory. She spent most of winter break training in preparation for the 2008 Olympic trials. And she'd only have to walk a few blocks: The best American players were gathering at Drexel to help determine who would advance to Beijing.

A man in the Daskalakis Athletic Center bleachers whispered to his young son: "The guy in red couldn't play in our basement. The ceiling's too low." The 5-foot-10 red-clad player, David Zhuang, often tosses the ball three feet above his head when serving, before striking it just above the table.

"When you throw the ball high, because of gravity, the ball comes back heavier, so you get more spin and density," he explained.

Zhuang entered the trials as the third-ranked male in the country. The top two received automatic invitations to the North American qualifiers in Vancouver, helping Zhuang leave Drexel with first-place honors and a Liberty Bell trophy to prove it.

But the spectator's observation could really be applied to any of the athletes present. Though the table is the same, this, where players can hit the ball over 100 miles per hour, is not basement-variety ping-pong. (Ping-Pong, it turns out, is a registered trademark of a gaming company, which is why the sport does not use the more colloquial name).

Table tennis is the most popular racquet sport in the world, and second overall, in terms of participation. USA Table Tennis (USATT) reports that over 14 million Americans play table tennis. Many, however, are unaware of the requisite training to become an Olympian.

"I just want people to say that this is a sport, to recognize it - that it's a different level than they think it is," Wei said.

Bob Fox, the American Team Leader, agreed with Wei's frustration.

"This is a demanding sport, and they have to be in great shape. Their eye-hand coordination is better than in any other sport in the world," he said, citing studies from past Olympic games.

But it has yet to catch on at a serious level in America.

"We use the word 'emerging' or 'developing' sport within our vernacular," said Mike Cavanaugh, CEO of USATT.

The top 30 players in the world can make $2 to $3 million annually, but the top five in the U.S. hover around $100,000. Only about 10 Americans make their living off table tennis.

Yet it was no coincidence that when each of the 5,500 fans entered the DAC this weekend, they were offered a complimentary fortune cookie. While table tennis might not be a huge draw here in the U.S., it is the biggest sport in the nation of 1.3 billion people across the Pacific. Table tennis players are superheroes in China, with celebrity status reserved stateside for only the best baseball, basketball and football players.

China has won 16 of the 20 events since table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988. The U.S. has never medaled, and even the top ranks of Americans are dominated by Chinese and Chinese-American players.

The 44-year-old Zhuang, for instance, played professionally for 10 years in his native China before his entire family emigrated to the U.S. in 1990. He became a citizen, and has since won five national titles.

The top female player, Chen Wang, also grew up in China. She was picked out of the sixth grade to go to a regional table tennis training center, where she lived apart from her parents. She went from the provincial school to the national team - an incredibly structured environment.

"You can't do that in this country," Fox said.

And Wei said it puts Americans like her at a disadvantage.

"It's one more person that you have to train to beat, but it's not really fair, because they didn't grow up in the same environment as you."

Wei had been training at the same place, with the same coach, since she began playing in 1996. Last week, though, she found herself a new hitting partner, for the eight months she spends at Penn. She currently plays for approximately 8 to 10 hours per week - a significant decrease from the 20 to 30 of her high school years - but she said that none of Penn's 20,000 students are at a high enough level to challenge her. She can practice with some, but for stiffer competition, she has been turning to people in the city and throughout the suburbs.

Enter Razvan Cretu. The Romanian-born Cretu began playing when he was four, and soon became a star for his native country. Later, he played professionally in Sweden and Greece, before landing in the U.S. in 1992. Five years later, he made the U.S. national team.

A knee injury sidelined Cretu since 2003, and, he said, in this country table tennis "doesn't pay the bills." So he turned his eyes to the business world, where he first tried sales and is now involved in a limousine business.

But he decided he wanted to return to the sport to which he had dedicated so many years. A month ago, he began exercising and losing the extra weight he had gained since retirement. To play in the Olympic trials, the Merion County, Pa., resident would have to finish in the top two of Thursday's qualifying tournament. Much to Cretu's own surprise, he won all four matches to advance.

His comeback bid was cut short after two of the three trials days, when his aching knee and subpar stamina proved to be too much. If nothing else, though, he found himself an unlikely new workout partner.

"We're going to sit down and set short term goals and long term goals and start a program for both of us," he said, referring to Wei, whom he met for the first time at Drexel.

The trials were drawing to a close, and Wei seemed poised to win her first match. But as she let her two-game advantage slip away, and as several other athletes fought for the final slots, a little shriek was piercing through the ping-pong sound from which the sport's nickname is derived. Ariel Hsing shouts "qiú," before each point ("It just gives me confidence," she says). Yet it is neither her sounds nor the "Let's go" she writes on her arm that distinguishes her from her competitors.

It's her size. The diminutive San Jose native and top junior player in America is just 12 years old. She won her first national title at eight, and earned a sponsorship from Butterfly at nine. Last year, she traveled on a private jet provided by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to play against investors.

And after the final round, in the most amazing scene of the tournament, reporters lined up, waiting to talk to her, while kids even younger than she circled around her, waiting to hear what she had to say, and, perhaps, to get her autograph.

Hsing finished 1-7, but she more than held her own against competitors many times her age. With her youthful optimism and dedication-"I want to go to the Olympics, and win the gold, hopefully, and I want to help America be better at table tennis" - she is the future of the sport.

As for Wei, she was disappointed with her last-place finish. Yet she enjoyed her time in the spotlight and knew that, by coming to Penn, her game was bound to suffer.

She said: "Going to school right now is much more important to me, and being happy where I'm going to school, than just training a lot."

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