"I understand everyone in this building," Wetzel said on the final Saturday in March, as he sat at the gym in the Anniston Army Depot. He gestured to the almost 50 women and men in the dozen tables setup for the annual Alabama State Teams tournament ping pong paddles reviews.
They lunged and crouched. Dodged and grunted. Sweated. Stayed focused on dining table, ball and net.
"I enjoy the competition," explained Gary Luther, a 69-year-old Gadsden resident that pushes to the depot for weekly ping pong clinic rounds. "And I enjoy the camaraderie."
Sure this was a contest: You will find the requisite cries of defeat, grunts of pain. The victorious harrumphs and pumping of paddles. However there were hugs and handshakes, friendly jests and high-fives with competitions. In reality, the majority of ping pong players state that equilibrium of bodily battle and post-match friendship as one reason that they can not get enough of this game.
It is the main reason former Alabama state winner Ernesto Kawamoto clinics for hours every day in the dining table, and why he has taken 24-year-old protege David Landry, a fellow Huntsville resident, under his wing. The motive Danny Feldman, of Homewood, compels hours compete in ping pongtournaments all around the country -- despite the fact that "everybody thinks I am nuts, beginning with my spouse."
Ping pong vs. Table tennis
Feldman and other significant gamers understand the majority of individuals do not see ping pong for a sport. Many men and women call it by its own Parker Brothers signature, Ping-Pong, and consider it as a game you play with at the cellar or a school rec room, or even a camp hallway.
"There is this picture as somebody with a drink in 1 hand and a 5 racket at the flip side," Luther said.
But that is too insignificant a picture for gamers such as Wetzel, Kawamoto and Feldman. Even though nearly all of them started out playing these cellar tables through college breaks, their decision to stick out from the game set them apart.
Now they view themselves as fierce opponents at a superior sport -- just one which requires attention and ability, weight-training and bodily area, aggressive drive and decent sportsmanship. (Additionally, it requires some cash: The rackets utilized with these players cost anywhere between $200 and $300. And the price for particular ping pong sneakers is at $60 a set, Wetzel stated.)
"It is bodily; it is technical; it is psychological," Kawamoto said. "It is challenging. Absolutely."
Feldman stated ping pong joins skills from many different sports. Like its sister game tennis, tabletennis demands exceptional hand-eye coordination. Like basketball or soccer, it needs players to be fast on their toes. Like poker, it requires the ability to read opponents' heads.
And then there is the capability to restrain "twist," the way the ball is turning as it flies across the internet.
"The top men can read spin and expect spin," Feldman explained. "The direction you twist a ball actually makes a difference"
The championship in the Anniston Army Depot started in 2004, but recordings of Alabama inhabitants playing ping pong start in 1965, said Mike Harris, a depot worker and one of the organizers of this championship.
Throughout the '60s, depot employees started to play ping pong during change breaks, '' Harris explained. Twenty decades after, the predecessor to the Northeast Alabama Ping pong Club was formed in Huntsville by three guys with four springs and tables, as demonstrated by a history composed by Wetzel and fellow participant Chip Patton.
The team held its first USA Ping pong-sanctioned championship in 1985 -- three years ahead of the game was introduced into the Olympics.
When that occurred, Wetzel stated, fascination with ping pong started to eliminate top ping pong tables.
Worldwide tv viewership for the game started to increase during every Olympic season, according to a report by the International Ping pong Museum. Throughout the Athens games in 2004, ping pong rated No. 5 from sports observed on televisions throughout the world.
In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Wetzel and also a lot of other ping pong players out of Alabama did everything they could to foster the sport.
For a couple of weeks during the matches, Wetzel functioned as the data supervisor for the game. Kawamoto, a Brazil indigenous, flew from his home nation to function as a field marshal and escort tabletennis athletes. Patton was employed as a ping pong statistician, as stated by the game history and Wetzel wrote. Anniston resident Joe Mitchell served as a field marshal.
"It is extremely popular today," Harris stated. "Plus it appeals to all ages."
By way of instance, involvement in the depot championship has improved annually since the tourney started in 2004, Harris pointed out. This past year, the players' ages ranged from 13 to 77.
Wetzel features the broad appeal of ping pong for this: anybody with a desire to understand the game's technicalities and a willingness to practice could be a comparatively prosperous participant. You do not need to worry about 6-foot-something or conduct a 4.4-second 40-yard dashboard to be good at ping pong.
And of course, the game is a fantastic way to make new friends.
"You play with a person, and they eventually become your friend," Wetzel explained.
Lately, a range of famous Americans and actors have professed a passion for this game.
Lady Susan Sarandon possesses a ping pong club in Manhattan. In February, she was featured in a Wall Street Journal article for her attempts to bring the game to colleges across the nation.
When Goldman Sachs executive manager Greg Smith resigned from his job, he said tabletennis as among his best achievements in a New York Times op-ed piece.
"My proudest moments in life -- getting a complete scholarship to move from South Africa into Stanford University, being chosen as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for tabletennis in the Maccabiah Games in Israel, called the Jewish Olympics -- have come through hard labour, without shortcuts," he said.
Will Shortz, better known since the New York Times crossword puzzle editor or as NPR's puzzlemaster, can also be a ping pong aficionado. He possesses a ping pong club Pleasantville, N.Y., and has contributed countless interviews regarding his love of this game.
Shortz played in the depot this past year.
Shortz was passing through the region, appeared online to find out whether there weren't any ping pongopportunities and discovered about the Northeast Alabama Ping pong club, '' Harris explained.
Shortz arrived at the depot to get "a normal Tuesday club night" and played some of the regional athletes, '' Harris explained.
"He really beat me," Harris stated. "He was much better than anybody else in our team."
Wetzel did not win the current tournament in the depot. Since the assistant sports editor for The Decatur Daily, he does not get to clinic or weight-train such as he was used to. However, the umpire stated his enthusiasm for the game stays the same -- he likes to referee the occasions, play them for pleasure and spend some time with his youthful umpire son.
He speaks lovingly about his fellow ping pong players: visit a championship anywhere in the country and you will probably find Wetzel, pointing from that the coach-protege group of Kawamoto and Landry, praising the functions of "Bumpernets" teammates Adam Brown and Barnabas Gonzalez.
Brown and Gonzalez, from Hoover and Pell City respectively, won this season's tournament. It is the second year in a row they have taken the gold.
Wetzel recalled his own days of success: He said that his main achievement was winning the 2002 state doubles championship with Kawamoto in his side.
But that is another fantastic thing about this game -- winning is not everything. So far as Wetzel is worried, serving as among the 25 umpires from america who get called to referee global matches is almost as rewarding best ping pong robot.
"I do not live on it," Wetzel said after dropping his game the depot. "I get invited to tournaments all around the world."
