After delay, Upper St. Clair student finally organizes benefit table-tennis tourney
Ready for action at the table-tennis tournament are Hong Zhao and Larissa Holley.
Mark Krotec provides some instruction during the tournament.
A player receives the ball from her opponent in advance of a serve.
At the start of 2020, Upper St. Clair High School student Vidhur Senthil suggested a tournament to promote one of his favorite activities.
“We want to try to get everyone interested in table tennis, and we thought this would be a good way to do it,” he said.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Vidhur Senthil and Mark Krotec review details at the tournament’s registration table.
He spoke with Mark Krotec, president and founder of Pittsburgh Oakland Table Tennis Club, about organizing an event “sometime within the next few months,” Vidhur recalled.
The idea ended up on the shelf, of course, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But on Oct. 17, the tournament finally took place at the club’s home base, Central Catholic High School.
Vidhur is a proponent of environmental education at his school, where he is a senior, and he arranged for the tournament to raise money to benefit regional nonprofits working toward related causes. The winners in each of three divisions – novice, intermediate and advanced, with about 80 participants in all – selected where the $1,200-plus that was generated would go.
The event drew players from a wide range of ages, affirming Krotec’s description of table tennis as a lifetime sport.
“I didn’t take it seriously until I was about 52. I figured I was getting too old for other sports,” the Indiana Township resident recalled. “I had played before, but I didn’t really know how to play properly. I took it up at that time, and I took it seriously enough to run a club and become a coach, as well.”
He founded the Oakland club in 2005, and it attained USA Table Tennis membership in 2011. The home base is in Central Catholic’s gymnasium.
The gym was full of activity the day of the tournament, as participation by those who registered in advance was bolstered by plenty of walk-ins.
“It worked out very, very well,” Krotec said. “What we’re really interested in is building the sport from the bottom up, and so we’d like to get a lot of middle school and high school kids. So we’ll probably do something again like this in the spring, focusing more on the schools and trying to get the young kids involved.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Promosing sixth-grader Connor Chang gets ready to return a serve.
One of the young players who has made a good impression on him is Connor Chang, a sixth-grader from Franklin Park. He honed his skills while living with his family in Taiwan, where table tennis ranks as one of the top three favorite sports, and has continued to do so after moving back to the United States.
“There’s lots of technique,” Connor said between games at the tournament. “It’s easy to hit it on the table, but it’s difficult to hit it really hard with accuracy.”
Another participant in the event was Anuj Shah, an Upper St. Clair sophomore who plays on the high school tennis team and took up the tennis version.
“I started playing because you can’t play tennis every day outside,” he said, explaining that the two activities complement each other. “Tennis helps with hand-eye coordination, and table tennis helps hand movements.”
Duck Donuts in Upper St. Clair served as the event’s sponsor, providing five dozen free donuts for participants to enjoy.
“Andrew Jarusinsky is the owner, and he was very kind with helping us out,” Vidhur said.
Along with the Oakland club, another group is active in the Pittsburgh area: The South Park Table Tennis Club, based in the park’s home economics building, started in 1957 and stands as the oldest continually USATT-affiliated club in the country.
For more information about regional table tennis, visit pittsburghtabletennis.com.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Competitors square off during play in the tournament’s intermediate division.