The Beginning of a Hobby. Growing up it was common for my two older brothers not to let me play with them. I

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1 Riddle 1 Kate Marie Riddle The Beginning of a Hobby Growing up it was common for my two older brothers not to let me play with them. I always wanted to tag along whether it was golfing, fishing, riding four wheelers, playing football, or even playing paint ball. They had me beat at everything until the day we got our first ping pong table, when I was thirteen. My dad usually came home from work with something for the boys, so at first, I thought nothing of it. After the table was set up, I thought I would give it a go. After my first few rallies, I came to the conclusion that I may have some talent in ping pong! I am a tennis player, so the game came naturally to me. Competition My older brother, Chase, and I would stay up as late as we could to play. He was older, so obviously, he would beat me, and that drove me up the wall. This was when my passion for ping pong escalated. I practiced and practiced every day after school for hours, so by the time my brother came home, I was good and ready. I got better and better, and it soon became hard for my brother to beat me. The day he moved off to college was the day that ping pong did not matter as much to me. Beating him was the fuel to my fire, and without that, there was no reason to play. I hung up my paddle until high school. I had team sports in my first semester of high school which included ping pong. We had a choice every day of which activities we wanted to do, and every day, I chose ping pong. I was pretty rusty, because I had not played in years, but with the help of some upperclassmen, I was back to my old self. We played every day of the semester, and at the end we held a tournament for the class. I did not win this tournament, but I placed in the top three. Throughout high school, I showed my little brother, Hampton, the ropes. Like my older brother and I, Hampton and me played every single night before bed. Ping pong is now one of his favorite hobbies, too.

2 Riddle 2 First Serve When doing research for the paper, I came across some valuable information from The Concise Encyclopedia of Sports. Ping Pong started in the early nineteenth century in England. It was common after dinner entertainment for the upper-middle class Victorians who wanted to play a mini version of lawn tennis. They used books as the net, empty cigar boxes for paddles, and either a ball of string, rubber balls, or a champagne cork for a ball. Ping pong has had several different names: Whif waf, gossamer, flim flam, and table tennis. (Jennison) Early versions of table tennis used rackets (bats / paddles) with velum stretched over an outer casing (similar to a small drum) attached to a handle. The name ping-pong derived from the noise made when one hit the ball. (Hammond) In 1901, English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd, registered the name Ping-Pong as a copyright. Players started using celluloid balls after James Gibb, an English man, discovered them during a trip to the United States in 1901 and proved them to be perfect for Ping-Pong. In 1903, E.C. Goode replaced the old cigar box paddles with pimpled rubber on light wooden blades as rackets (Jennison 145). Tim Bogan gave me good information about the competitive world of ping pong. After the world championships in Prague in 1936, the net was lowered to make the pace of the gameplay faster, because two defensive players had taken over an hour to contest one point. Around this time, ping pong spread through America and other European countries. China, Korea, and Japan were said to have been taught ping pong by British soldiers stationed there. The first unofficial world championship was held in 1901, but the first official world championship was founded by the International Table Tennis Federation in The ITTF was founded in 1926 in Berlin by Sweden, England, India, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Wales. (Boggan)

3 Riddle 3 According to the ITTF (International Table Tennis Foundation), people would say that Asian countries dominate the ping pong world. Back in the 1950 s and 1960 s, teams like France, Hungary, and Sweden seemed unbeatable. In 1952, Horoi Satoh, a Japanese player, introduced the foam rubber paddle. The paddle made the ball spin more, and it made the game go faster. In 1960, Japan became the champions in world competitions, and by the mid 1960 s to the 1980 s, China took over. In the Olympic Games in 1988, China dominated against Sweden and Korea making their mark permanent (ITTF Museum). Second Serve The rules may seem complicated in Ping Pong, but I play the simple way. To serve, one has to throw the ball up and hit it, before it falls. The ball then has to hit his/her serving s side of the table in order for the ball to bounce to the opponent. If the ball hits the net in the serve but still goes over, it is called a let. If it is a let, the server may serve again. A let is a disregarded point. Lets also can be disturbances, and when the opponent was not ready for the serve. The scoring is very easy. Whoever wins gets one point! The way I play is by playing ping before the actual game. Ping is where one person serves, and for every hit, a letter from the word ping is spelled out as p-i-n-g. The first person to mess up after the word is spelled has to receive the serve. The scoring that I use is very easy. When the score is a multiple of five, the serve changes to the opponent. This can be played either to eleven or twenty-one. In an eleven point game, when someone has ten points, it is called match point or game point. During this time, the losing party has to serve to the opponent with the higher score for the last point. If the losing person wins the point, then the game would keep going, until the server messes up or until deuce. Deuce means having the same score as the last point. Whoever wins when it is deuce has the advantage. Deuce could go on for days. One person gets one point and the other wins the

4 Riddle 4 next. My older brother and I used to have forty-five minute long games due to deuce. We would go back and forth until one of us messed up two times in a row, which was uncommon! DEUCE The official rules of ping pong are a little stricter than the way I play. According to Sports: the Complete Visual Reference, written by Fortin, the table has to be 2.74 meters long and meters wide, and it has to be seventy-six centimeters tall, whereas my table was never put together right. The ball is supposed to be able to bounce twenty-three centimeters when dropped from thirty centimeters. The table top is supposed to be dark with white lines, while mine is faded, and the lines are gone but still marked with pollen. There should be a straight line down the middle dividing the two sides. (Fortin 25) According to Sports Rules Encyclopedia, the net has to be centimeters high, the outside limits of the post being centimeters outside the side line. Official balls are supposed to be spherical, with a diameter of 40 millimeters and weigh 2.7 grams. The ball should be made of celluloid or something like it. Though I have seen rainbow colored ping pong balls, regulation ping pong balls are white or orange. The paddle can be any size, but the blade has to be flat and rigid. The rubber material on the paddles is placed strategically for regulation. The rubber mat on the outside of the blade is always red on one side and black on the other. It is allowed to have some fading or discoloration, as long as the players themselves do not make a change to the characteristics of the surface (White 243). Each player serves two points in a row and then switch server. However, if a score of is reached in any game, then each server serves only one point and then the server is switched. After each game, the players switch side of the table. In the final game (5th game), the players switch side again after either player reaches 5 points. (Wallechinsky)

5 Riddle 5 Ping pong in terminology does not sound very fun, but it all actuality, it is the best game ever invented. I would play it every day, if I could. I have a tennis swing, so my technique is a little different than that of others. I take a full forehand and backhand swing every time. It is easier to me, but to anyone who does not play tennis, it is hard to do. The backhands are the hardest and my worst. I hold my paddle fully with my right hand, so it is difficult to play with a tennis swing with a short return time. It is not easy switching from a forehand to a backhand in a matter of seconds. However, like John McEnroe said I'll let the racket do the talking. (Gupta) Crunch Time Like other sports/hobbies, table tennis requires lots of practice in order for someone to be the best. Pro table tennis players take conditioning very seriously. According to they recommend extreme workout plans, including logging in one s work times every single day. Pushups, sit ups, and jump ropes all are a part of these strict exercises. (pongworld) According to Christian Lillieroos, most people in the USA are surprised by the fact that table tennis is a very physically demanding sport. When general physical fitness tests for all sports are done in developed Table Tennis countries, Table Tennis is frequently considered to have the best overall fit athletes. To create a strength and conditioning program for table tennis, we have to look at what all levels of athletes need in terms of physical requirements. Typically a player has 0.5 seconds to react to a ball hit at 60 MPH from a distance of nine feet. The ball can also have up to 9000 RPM of spin, and the table is five feet wide. In a race of 100 meter it is speed. Table tennis is much faster than that, dealing with quickness and explosiveness similar to combat. To react fast and remain in balance, you need to be low, lean forward, with your knees bent to about 90 degrees depending on your height. Quick lateral movements are used

6 Riddle 6 almost exclusively with one step back and forth for balls close to the net. A defending player is doing much more work inwards and outwards compared to an offensive player and the rallies are longer. A close match in seven games takes about 45 minutes. (Lillieroos) Match Point My family is so interested in ping pong that for Christmas, my dad got my mom a concrete stained ping pong table for our back porch. These are not very common, and it was her favorite present ever. I think it is my hobby, because it not only brings my family together, but it also creates a healthy competition among the six of us. Ping pong is not hard; it is fun, and one does not have to break a sweat every time it is played. It is the perfect example of tennis, without the running, annoying rules, or alleys. I always will love and play table tennis, because I could not imagine my life without it. It truly has brought my family closer, and it is just a downright fun game. I love going home to a family that loves doing things together, and ping-pong is one of the most favored activities! I am a very active person, and without sports and hobbies, like pingpong, I would lose my mind. It is very healthy to have a safe competitive sport that women, like me, can play, and beat men. Like Patricia Vertinsky said, "women's demand for sport and physical education were expressions of varied attempts at female liberation..."(vertinsky) As my family has done, I will carry on my love for ping pong to my children, grandchildren, etc.