When Erika Sadovsky was first introduced to table tennis she wasn’t tall enough to see over the table.
That’s not surprising since she was only five years old at the time, so she concentrated on just learning how to bounce the ball on the paddle. Now 10 years old, Erika has no trouble seeing over the top of the table and plays with the North Shore Table Tennis Club.
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong, is a popular sport in Europe and other places around the world, but is less known in Canada.
Erika’s mom Luba hopes to change that, at least on the North Shore. Luba and her friend Claudine Gunn started the table tennis club in North Vancouver this year and offer recreational play, as well as private lessons and summer camps.
Luba played table tennis professionally for 20 years and at the national level for Czechoslovakia. She was eight years old when she started playing and introduced her daughter to the game at an early age as well, but says the focus at that time was on fun and developing fundamental skills.
Luba explains that many kids don’t have the hand-eye co-ordination to really play table tennis well until they are a bit older. So younger kids learn better by first practising bouncing the ball, learning the movement of the ball on the table, and using the paddle.
“But they learn faster than adults,” says Luba, noting adults tend to be more self-conscious, but kids “pick it up faster and they learn faster.”
Erika explains that learning how to play table tennis can be difficult at first, just like learning any new sport, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not that hard.
“It’s really fun,” she says. “You get to be energetic instead of sitting around watching a screen all day.”
Learning to use the paddle properly is not too hard, she says, but keeping the ball on the table is. Control is an important part of the game, and that takes time to learn. Erika admits she is still working on controlling her hits so they are not too hard, but just hard enough. She is good at serving, though, and says the easiest part of learning to play is bouncing the ball on the paddle and flipping it from side to side.
“If you don’t know how to play it’s OK, you just keep trying and playing for fun and soon you’ll be really good,” she says, adding, “It’s not a big deal if you lose, it’s just for fun.”
Erika plays once a week with her mom at the club and plans to attend one of their summer camps as well. “I think any kid can learn because it’s really easy and once you get the hang of it you get really good and you actually start to like it so I think any kid could play,” she notes.
Her mom agrees and adds that it’s a good game to help develop hand-eye co-ordination in kids and adults too. While there’s plenty of fun to be had at the club, Luba is also hoping to develop some competitive North Shore table tennis athletes as well.
When asked what does it take to be a good player, she answers quickly: “Time and practice, and also determination and passion.”
For more information about summer camps at the North Shore Table Tennis Club visit nsttc.ca.
This story originally appeared in a special section of the North Shore News focusing on summer camps.
