The final series ran over three weeks at the local club. Each week I sighed with relief that this would be the last night I'd be required to turn up at the hall to negotiate my way through a few rubbers of table tennis while trying not to look like a complete idiot. Vain hope! I won few games in the finals, few in the season proper for that matter, but still my team prospered.
I joined the table tennis club three years ago when I had a bit more freedom from marking essays at night as a part of my job as a high school English teacher. I'd enjoyed table tennis games at friends' places before that and wanted to learn more about the game. Naively,I had not even contemplated the possibility that the club would be competitive. Competitive sport was anathema to me except from the vantage point of a couch potato viewer of aussie rules football. Now here I was in a thicket of gradings, a truly hierarchical order of abilities with me at the bottom with a massive handicap.
Hierarchy was one thing but the saving grace was -I was not alone, I was part of a team. I found that I liked playing doubles best; I felt more confident and able to contribute more as one half of a doubles pair. Added to that was the extra strength gained as part of the team when our top players raised the overall team score and dragged the rest of us along to victory.
Now I'm part of a winning team and I have a trophy to prove it.
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