Table Tennis

Marcus Jackson, the top-ranked U.S. table tennis player under age 18, practices the sport for two hours every day. But all of that work didn't give the 17-year-old from Riverdale the edge he needed Saturday. In a roughly 20-minute match, he lost to a top-seeded German player during the 2009 JOOLA North American Teams Championships for table tennis held in Baltimore this weekend. The final rounds are today. The event attracted 950 players from all across the globe, ages 8 to 80 years old. It's been held annually at the Baltimore Convention Center for the past 12 years.

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.

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.

The Maryland Table Tennis Association is seeking to attract members for its new location, Suite T, 9176 Red Branch Road, off Route 108 in Columbia.The club is open from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesdays, from 7: 30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Thursdays and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.Tournaments are held monthly.All ages and abilities are welcome. Lessons are available.Daily fees are $6 for adults, $3 for children younger than age 18, college students and seniors, and $9 for families.Information: 410-747-6176.

Spinning serves and kill shots. An orange plastic ball flying over wooden tabletops at speeds nearing 100 mph. Shrieks and grunts from players. Teams from across the nation and from more than 30 countries -- including Argentina, China, Hungary, Trinidad and Venezuela -- converged on the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday for the start of the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships. As a spectator sport, table tennis has been generally ignored in the United States, with most attention given to professional tennis and players with household names.

The Baltimore Convention Center was filled yesterday with the pitter-patter of little orange balls bouncing and spinning across rows of green tables. The occasion was the North American Teams Table Tennis Championship, which drew 830 players from more than a dozen countries. The three-day tournament wraps up today. Each year, the event attracts a wide range of competitors, from recreational players looking for opponents beyond their basement walls to world-class players with Olympic medals, national titles and international rankings on their side of the 6-inch-high nets.

This is not your father's pingpong game. Forget those skinny wooden rackets and one-on-one games to 21. Today's fast-paced table tennis matches feature paddles padded with sponge and covered in smooth rubber for greater spin control and speed. Players in singles or doubles face off in best-of-five games only to 11 points each. At the Maryland Circuit Table Tennis Tournament in Carroll County during the weekend, 36 enthusiasts competed for cash prizes as part of a monthly competition. Organizer Yvonne Kronlage said the purse would be 50 percent of the entry fees for the weekend.

You're probably familiar with that green table, the stubby-handled paddles and bouncy, little, white balls. You may even have the stuff in your rec room - probably piled high with laundry. That's just what Yvonne Kronlage would like to change. Kronlage, a former Columbia resident who lives on the Howard County side of Sykesville, is president of the Maryland Table Tennis Association. She is a diehard table-tennis enthusiast who would like to see more people involved in the sport she is so passionate about but sees Americans ignoring.

CHICAGO - How does a city that gained international acclaim for placing fiberglass cows on street corners come up with an encore? For Lois Weisberg, the answer is no further than the pingpong table gathering dust in her basement. "My grandson came into town for a visit, and after he found the table in the basement, he didn't come upstairs for three days," says Weisberg, Chicago's commissioner of cultural affairs. "He had such fun with it that I started thinking, why not try to bring pingpong out of the basement and bring it out into the city?"