Houston table tennis aims for ‘new era’
Daniel Tran sat up as Team USA’s 21-year-old table tennis champion, Kanak Jha, raised the ball above his head. Across the table crouched Timo Boll, a legendary German player nearly twice Jha’s age.
In one swift motion, Jha served to Boll, who rocketed the ball back to the American side, where Jha hit it into the net, sending Boll to the penultimate round.
It was the end of the American journey at this year’s World Table Tennis Championships in Houston, held Nov. 23-29.
For Tran, a 14-year-old rising star and U.S. national team member from Katy, however, the weeklong tournament at the George R. Brown Convention Center was inspirational on its own.
Along with 30,000 spectators, Tran saw history being made for the United States and Houston, which hosted the first world championship on American soil since the tournament began in 1926. The event saw the United States earn its first medal in 52 years during a doubles match in which Team USA’s Lily Zhang and Chinese player Lin Gaoyuan teamed up to win bronze.
Global cities like Houston stand to benefit if events like the world championship help kickstart table tennis as a professional sport in the United States. Weeks after the tournament, some Houston table tennis players and coaches said they think it finally is becoming a possibility.
Houston’s tournament was the result of cooperation between the United States and China, which joined forces to secure the world championship for Houston and the Chinese city of Chengdu in 2022. The Bayou City event marked the 50th anniversary of “pingpong diplomacy” between the American and Chinese national teams, whose meeting at the 1971 championship in Japan helped normalize relations between the USA and the People’s Republic of China.
In the five decades since, table tennis never became a major sport in the United States. However, the sport, which demands lightning-fast reactions and strategy as much as physical power, has developed an enormous following in Latin America, Europe and Asia, especially China, which won every gold medal at the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympics.
American players are striving for greatness at the world level,
despite the absence of a professional league that has led many promising young athletes to go elsewhere or switch careers.
Tim Wang, a former U.S. national champion from Houston who helped organize this year’s world championship, hopes that lack of structure will change, starting at the local level.
In 2016, Wang helped start the Houston International Table Tennis Academy in Katy, where Tran and many of the Houston area’s promising young players take lessons from former pros. HITTA’s cavernous training room is divided into three sections that reflect skills at the local, national and world levels, said Manny Velazquez, the academy’s general manager.
Elite students like Tran, who compete at national and global tournaments, show up after school to train six days a week. Few, though, are thinking of pro careers. And with college entrance exams looming, many can spare only one to three hours per day, Velazquez said.
That is a paltry amount compared to most young talents around the world. On a recent afternoon, Tran’s mother, Ann, watched as her son rallied with a coach. Without an organized talent pipeline for American youth, Tran started training with his father before the family found Wang and other professional players to coach him, she said.
“When we go to international tournaments, nobody believes Daniel only trains part time,” she said. “He’s training 1 hour a day and competing with kids training all day.”
For Tim Wang, Tran’s story shows the promise and the challenges of American table tennis. A week after helping Team USA win silver at the World Youth Table Tennis Championships in early December, Daniel Tran was asked what he hoped to achieve. He talked about attending college and going into business.
It is a common answer that reflects the financial limitations the sport faces here, Velazquez said. The biggest challenge is helping American audiences learn to appreciate competitive table tennis. “We call it the Olympic dream because it’s an Olympic sport,” he said.
Huijing Wang, a Houston coach who once trained Tim Wang and works with Tran, has kept alive that Olympic dream. In 2020, the 39-year-old was surprised with a chance to compete at Team USA’s Tokyo Olympics trial tournament. Huijing scraped together a few hours a day to train with amateur friends in between her coaching duties, eventually securing a spot as an Olympian.
As a veteran player beating competitors from the next two generations, Huijing said she hopes to see a higher level of play among up-and-coming American talent.
“You have to train young players and have a better system,” she said.
Tim Wang was not surprised that Houston beat out locations in California and New York to become the first American city to host the world championship. Organizers had projected 10,000 attendees but reached triple that, a testament to the city’s global culture, he said.
“It was super exciting to see everybody from Houston, which is such a diverse city with so many people coming and supporting their favorite athletes,” Wang said. “The last three days of the tournament were completely filled out.”
Houston’s moment on the global stage marked a “new era” of potential for landing major sponsorships and attracting audiences for American players, Wang said.
That funding could support a top-tier league featuring professional teams based in Houston and other cities with large international populations, Velazquez explained.
“Unfortunately, in the U.S. what we’re missing is a trampoline to world class,” Velazquez said.
He gestured toward Tran, practicing alongside Melanie Díaz, a globally-ranked top 100 player who stayed in Houston to train after the world championship. Nearby, the academy’s top 6- to 10-year-olds darted back and forth.
“This is world class, national team class, and it’s here in Houston,” Velazquez said.