Story by Amanda Beam / Photos by Joe Ulrich
COVER
After nine decades, New Albany table tennis club still swings high
Physics predicts that spheres behave a certain way. Look to the heavens and we see the moon rotating around the Earth. Planets? Why, they eclipse the sun. Comets shoot across the sky, in an observable pattern. Order reigns supreme.
The bounce of a small ball, only 50 mm in a diameter and not even a tenth of an ounce in weight, feels like it turns the works of Kepler and Newton on their heads.
On the hard playing surfaces of the Southern Indiana Table Tennis Association( SITTA), Steven Banet Sr. rockets the polymer projectile across the net toward the far edge of the table. An object in motion stays in motion and follows the same direction, Sir Isaac has led us to believe.
But Banet, using a combination of muscle memory and strategy, has applied a force- a spin- to his return of the ball, changing its trajectory. As it strikes the table, the sphere zigs roughly 90 degrees from its likely path. His opponent has little time to react.
The man nicknamed Pappy earns the point. And somehow Newton’ s laws, too, remain intact.
“ This is my church. It’ s right here three nights a week,” Banet says. The 1988 New Albany High School grad has hit at SITTA for more than 40 years, and has made coaching table tennis his profession.
“ People are always very helpful. They’ re always very polite, very nice. They don’ t judge.” says the 54-year-old with a long beard, tattooed arms, and multiple piercings.“ Everywhere I go, I get profiled. But when I’ m here, I know I love everybody and everybody loves me.”
THE HOUSE THAT TABLE TENNIS BUILT
Jeff McCaffrey returned to SITTA several weeks ago after last playing at the club in the 1980s. Retirement has given the 65-year-old more time for the sport.
“ It was neat when I came here the first time,” McCaffrey says.“ I’ m walking up the same stairs to the same smell and same sound. These are the same benches. It’ s like a flashback.”
It’ s difficult to talk of SITTA without mentioning the building that houses it. Since its 1935 founding, the association has called 1721 Ekin Ave. home, making SITTA the oldest table tennis club in America.
Once a Civil War hospital and then a Boys and Girls Club, the structure provides its players a safe, comfortable environment. The City of New Albany owns the building and generously facilitates SITTA’ s upstairs use.
MAY / JUNE 2025 NEWS AND TRIBUNE SPORTS MAGAZINE PAGE NO. 21