WHAT WE SAY IS IF YOU WANT TO LEARN THE GAME, COME HERE, AND SOMEBODY CAN HELP TEACH YOU. THE MORE YOU PLAY, THE BETTER YOU’ RE GOING TO GET.”
John Allen is an instructor at the Southern Indiana Table Tennis Association in New Albany. Photo by Joe Ullrich sold more than 75,000 rackets in his lifetime. Aficionados of the sport still search them out even today, more than 25 years after his death.
Banet remembers helping Hock manufacture the rackets. Today, the coach repairs those same paddles using Hock’ s specialized tools.
“ I spent thousands of hours in that old man’ s basement, putting paddles together, shipping them all over the world. All his equipment was all homemade … all his little sanders and saws, all the lawn mower motors that he fashioned,” Banet says.“ The guy was a genius.”
Moreover, Hock instilled a love of table tennis in the Ohio River city.
Alstott remembers being six years old and flipping over an old wooden Coca-Cola crate from his father’ s New Albany grocery store. He climbed on top of the box and played Hock, who introduced him to the sport.
“ I got up on that and I played the United States Champion,” Alstott says.“ I was just in awe. I wanted to get a whole lot better. That’ s kind of the history of me growing up with table tennis.”
THE SPORT
The game that Alstott learned as a kid has changed a bit. According to Olympics. com, the International Table Tennis Federation( ITTF) currently allows more than 1,600 different kinds of rubber for rackets. The once celluloid balls are now plastic, and their diameter has increased by 2 mm.
Scoring and gameplay, too, have evolved. In the past, players had to score 21 points to win a game. In 2001, the ITTF tried to bring excitement to the sport by reducing the winning point total to 11. The best three of five games win the match.
How do you improve your skills? Louisville resident and World Senior Games Table Tennis medal winner Yueling Zhang says a coach can significantly help your game.
Like Zhang, 21-year-old Luke Smith suggests practicing. While his dad has competed in the sport for decades, Smith started playing again after trying it out in middle school.
“ I’ ve been playing for a year. I don’ t think I’ ve beat a person in this room yet,” the 2022 Floyd Central grad says.“ You can always get better. It doesn’ t matter how old you are... But you have to just be willing to get better and have no expectations of winning, because someone in here who is in their 80s will not let you score a point on them.”
MAY / JUNE 2025 NEWS AND TRIBUNE SPORTS MAGAZINE PAGE NO. 23