Table Tennis

It sounds like tennis, it scores like tennis, but where's that fuzzy yellow ball?Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro, recently introduced Laser Tennis, a scaled-down version of table tennis with a gimmick: Players with child-sized plastic rackets chase a red "ball" of light around the "court."The $40 game can be played by a single player against a computer or by two players.The package includes a folding 40-by-19-inch court (the color of a red clay court, if you really use your imagination)

Colleges Two goals by Mullins lift Terps men to 13th win in row Patrick Mullins , the Atlantic Coast Conference Co-Player of the Week, added two goals to his league-leading point total as the No. 1 Maryland men's soccer team earned a 2-1 victory over visiting Lehigh. The Terps won their 13th consecutive game and matched their best start in program history (14-0-1). Mullins, who has 28 points, scored in the 12th minute, then broke a 1-1 tie in the 88th minute with his 10th goal of the year.

Baltimore's George Semples, a former Maryland state champion, scored an upset to win the senior veterans (over 70) division of the U.S. Table Tennis Championships in Midland, Mich., yesterday.Semples defeated Lazlo Bellak, former U.S. Open champion in 1937-38, by scores of 21-18, 21-14.Coran Primorac of Yugoslavia, the world's sixth-ranked player, won the men's open division, topping Korea's Yoo Nam Kyu in five sets. The Chinese No. 1 team beat the Chinese No. 2 team for team honors.More than 20 countries participated in the tournament.

Welcome back, everyone, to the Emmy-winning "Amazing Race. " And a special hello to our host, the Emmy-denied Phil, with his fabulous pointing finger and arched Eyebrow of Foreshadowing. Since this is the first episode, we are overwhelmed with teams and the names of the people on those teams. We have two Robs, two Jameses plus one Jaymes, an Abbie, Amy, and Abba, and twins named Natalie and Natalya. Can even a veteran recapper such as myself keep them straight? Well, yes, yes I can, because I cheat.

Derek Nie sat down in front of the camera at the Maryland Table Tennis Center in Gaithersburg and fielded the question from the television reporter. "Will [making the Olympics] make all this hard work worthwhile?" Derek, of North Potomac, paused and then shook his head. "No," he responds. "Because I still have to win the gold medal. " Never mind that the United States has never won an Olympic medal of any kind for table tennis. Never mind that Derek is just 11 years old, and never mind that he is about 4 feet tall and weighs just under 70 pounds.

Trying to hit balls moving faster than a major-league pitch, nearly 800 table tennis players converged on Baltimore this weekend for the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships, which ends today at the Baltimore Convention Center. They came from 10 countries, including Japan, China, Germany and Hungary, to play in the only team table tennis tournament in the country. The 189 teams are competing for $20,000 in prize money, with the Division I winner taking home $6,000. About 5,000 people attended the first two days of the tournament to watch the teams play on 141 tables spread out over a space that is close to the size of the field at Camden Yards.

McLEAN, Va. -- On one end of the table tennis table is robot R4PC, delivering scorching serves, wicked topspin shots, lobs and slices -- two balls per second. On the other end isSean O'Neill, grunting like Monica Seles, returning shots with deft precision.His footwork is so sweet. There are times you wonder which one is really the machine."We're always hearing how the Japanese are ahead of us in technology," says a sweaty O'Neill, 24, who has been playing against the robot for only three weeks.

BEIJING - In a nation of 1.3 billion people, she was one of the best in a sport held in higher regard than all others. Trouble was, fourth best was good enough only to get Wang Chen bounced from China's Olympic table tennis team. Not once but twice. She is now one of 39 foreign-born athletes occupying a place on a U.S. Olympic team, and she's fulfilling a dream by competing in her hometown, even though she is doing it in a uniform not of red, but of red, white and blue. For Chen, this was far from her plan.

An article in Sunday's Maryland section misidentified a participant in the Baltimore Classic Table Tennis Tournament. He is Mike Branch, not Mike French.The Sun regrets the errors.The Clarence Du Burns Arena felt like the world's largest rec room yesterday. All that was missing was the wood paneling and maybe a dart board or two.The occasion was the Baltimore Classic Table Tennis Tournament, a production of Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks. The atmosphere was part first-class athletic contest, part neighborhood kids gathering in the basement to knock around a little plastic ball.

They aren't paid to endorse running shoes.Their names aren't household words.When they travel to compete, they spend their money, earned at jobs unrelated to their sport.But 800 athletes came from around the world this weekend to smack around a little white ball at the Baltimore Convention Center, competing in an Olympic sport at a three-day tournament designed to promote the Baltimore-Washington region as a host for the Olympic Games.The North American Teams Table Tennis Championship brought many of the world's top players in a series of matches to promote the sport.

THURSDAY'S TELEVISION HIGHLIGHTS NASCAR K&N Pro Series: Columbus SPEED3 MLB Orioles@Yankees MASN9 a.m. Philadelphia@Washington MASN12:30 Philadelphia@Washington MASN, MLB7 Baseball Japan: Hiroshima vs. Chunichi (T) TCN10 MLB Philadelphia@Washington MASN11:30 PGA Web.com: Cox Classic, First Round GOLF11:30 a.m. WGC Bridgestone Invit., First Round GOLF2 Reno-Tahoe Open, First Round GOLF6:30 WGC Bridgestone Invit., First Round GOLF8:30 Olympics Tennis BRAVO7 a.m. Bask., B. Volley., Volley., Boxing etc NBCSP9 a.m. Swim., B. Volleyball, Volley., W. Polo etc. 11, 410 a.m. Boxing (T)

Hooked on vault Nick Sortal Sun Sentinel I don't care about the stories of teenage girls who gave up their whole life for a few moments wearing a sparkly outfit and smiling for millions on TV. But I do care about the athletics. And that's why this year I'm addicted to the women's vault. If it's not the most athletically challenging Olympic sport, it's the most underrated. First is a sprint, then a roundoff onto a springboard, then a dive onto the horse, then twists and flips that rival divers.

Derek Nie sat down in front of the camera at the Maryland Table Tennis Center in Gaithersburg and fielded the question from the television reporter. "Will [making the Olympics] make all this hard work worthwhile?" Derek, of North Potomac, paused and then shook his head. "No," he responds. "Because I still have to win the gold medal. " Never mind that the United States has never won an Olympic medal of any kind for table tennis. Never mind that Derek is just 11 years old, and never mind that he is about 4 feet tall and weighs just under 70 pounds.

Et cetera Sophia Young scored 18 points, all in the second half, as the visiting San Antonio Silver Stars handed the Washington Mystics their sixth loss in their past seven games, 78-73. Washington (3-11) got 15 points from Monique Currie and 13 from Crystal Langhorne (Maryland). The Silver Stars (10-5) have won six straight. Capitals: Washington re-signed forward Jay Beagle to a three-year contract extension Thursday. Beagle has spent his entire four-year career with the Capitals, recording career highs of four goals and five points in 41 games last season.

[This is the first in a series of stories getting to know a variety of local athletes and coaches away from the game.] This is how seriousJ.J. Hardyis about the game: the first thing you see when you walk into his Chandler, Ariz., home is a gleaming pingpong table. "It's a room most people would use as a sitting room," the Orioles shortstop says. "Put some nice furniture in there. Maybe a piano or something like that. " Not Hardy. Hardy wanted to make a statement. So he filled the room with a sleek, $2,500 Killerspin pingpong table, blue with silver trim.

Pingpong has long been considered a "basement sport," but for those who don't have the luxury of buying their own table, there are a few places to play and at least two clubs to join in the Baltimore area. The Baltimore Table Tennis Club, which has been in existence for 40 years, meets three times a week at Old Court Middle School. Typically, the club gets together Monday and Thursday nights from 8 to 10:30 and Saturday or Sunday mornings from 8 to noon. The club is run under the umbrella of the Liberty Road Rec Council.

ROCKVILLE -- Todd Sweeris knows what the offspring of famous athletes go through growing up, what it might have been like for Grant Hill or even Ken Griffey Jr. In a way, Hill and Griffey probably had it easier.They only had one parent's legacy to follow.Sweeris had two."It was great having parents like that," Sweeris said recently. "By the same token, whenever I would go to tournaments, people would ask me how my parents were doing, why they weren't still playing. That kind of psychologically wears you down.

Pingpong has long been considered a "basement sport," but for those who don't have the luxury of buying their own table, there are a few places to play and at least two clubs to join in the Baltimore area. The Baltimore Table Tennis Club, which has been in existence for 40 years, meets three times a week at Old Court Middle School. Typically, the club gets together Monday and Thursday nights from 8 to 10:30 and Saturday or Sunday mornings from 8 to noon. The club is run under the umbrella of the Liberty Road Rec Council.

The Baltimore Convention Center buzzed with the sounds of table tennis balls hitting rubber paddles as nearly 200 teams competed this weekend in a competition drawing players from around the world. Roughly 800 men and women of every skill level and age — 7 to 79 — competed at the JOOLA North American Teams Table Tennis Championships. The Division 1 finals ended with the Alex Table Tennis-Elite team, whose players came from China, defeating Team JOOLA, whose players came from Argentina, Slovakia and the Dominican Republic.

First off, the game's table tennis; please don't call it by the antiquated name pingpong. And if you think it's easy to play just because you can beat your siblings in heated basement matches, you could be in for a rude awakening. "People just dink around for the most part," says Richard Lee, president of Rockville-based North American Table Tennis and head of the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships, which volleys its way into the Baltimore Convention Center this weekend.