I went to the sec­ond league meet yes­ter­day, and it was def­i­nite­ly anoth­er expe­ri­ence. The diver­si­ty of all the play­ers is just amaz­ing. Their per­son­al­i­ties come out in every lit­tle detail, from their style of play, to how they lose a point, to how they serve.

There’s the team con­sist­ing most­ly of elder­ly ladies in their sweat pants, along with their lit­tle, sup­port­ive peanut gallery of friends who cheer and clap after every point. Sometimes the play­ers try to high five each oth­er when they get a good ral­ly in dou­bles, but end up shak­ing hands in a sort of awk­ward way. The most they ever say when they lose a point is, “Phooie!”, and fake an angry foot stomp, and are always the first ones to approach you for a hand shake. These are the ones who play social­ly, as some­thing to do on Sunday with their friends between what I’m guess­ing is tea and nap time.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, there are the play­ers who wear faces of dire aggres­sion as soon as the point starts, as if they’ll throw their pad­dles down and punch you in the face if you serve them an ace. These are the ones who intro­duce them­selves, state their provin­cial rank­ing, and imme­di­ate­ly ask for yours. They have no prob­lem with shout­ing one word exple­tives to release their frus­tra­tion when they’re los­ing, even when they’re play­ing next to the peanut gallery pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned. They don’t play for fun, they play to kick your ass.

There’s also the occa­sion­al dis­abled play­er, the per­son with one arm or crooked legs who plays to prove that he or she is just as good as any of the able bod­ied fuck­ers walk­ing around. One can tell how seri­ous they are in their pur­suit of equal­i­ty just from look­ing at their eyes. Their los­ing of a set to an able body will some­times result in the smash­ing of the ball two tables down.

There are also some play­ers from the Chinese club with rep­u­ta­tions to uphold, who are just play­ing for the top prize. The don’t talk when they warm-up and are expres­sion­less in their games. Each match for them is busi­ness, and they’ll rather insou­ciant­ly skunk you to get on with the next game.

One of the teams is an assem­bled set of top city ama­teurs, and one can tell that they’ve been play­ing since they were kids. They have appro­pri­ate uni­forms for dou­bles, and even stand when they’re offi­ci­at­ing. They’ll let out a loud, curt, “CHYA”, when they win a good ral­ly (I’m guess­ing they’re try­ing to say, “Yeah”, but exhale too vio­lent­ly as a result of hold­ing their breath dur­ing the point), and ball their hands in the vic­to­ry fist. These are the peo­ple who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly shout at the ball to stay on the table, and play sim­ply because they’re good. They’re the most expe­ri­enced, and one can tell from the strict­ness with which they serve, as well as the bad habits they’ve picked up that are uncor­rectable at this point.

In between match­es, I had the chance to intro­duce myself to and shake hands with the man, the very enthu­si­as­tic and mod­est head coach of the nation­al team. His name is always men­tioned, and peo­ple speak of him with great respect. His son is the top ranked play­er in Canada, and will be com­pet­ing to rep­re­sent Canada in the next Olympics soon.

I also start­ed talk­ing with some of the mem­bers from the worst team in Division A, a group of peo­ple who play recre­ation­al­ly but are good enough to butt heads with the less expe­ri­enced junior nation­al team play­ers. Their team is named Process of Elimination, after the punk band of the son of the team cap­tain. They’re an extreme­ly mod­est group of peo­ple who used to play more than 20 years ago, and have dust­ed off their pad­dles for a bit of fun. I asked them where they learned to play, and they burst out with laugh­ter so vio­lent­ly that I thought the umpire at the clos­est table was about make an inter­fer­ence call. I had assumed they were a team of coach­es, but they had nev­er even received a day of coach­ing in their lives. The league offi­cials could­n’t decide whether to put them in Division A or B, but they decid­ed to be in A because they’d rather lose every game than win every game. They haven’t won a sin­gle match yet, but they play like the next one will be their sweet­est vic­to­ry.