ABOUT A PING-PONG PLAYER


    Shashin Shodhan is a man on a mission. He wants to change people’s perception of ping-pong from that of a non-athletic after-school pastime to that of a physically intense battle of the wills. “You don’t just stand in one place and flick the wrist a little bit,” says Shodhan, one of the nation’s best table tennis players and an Olympic hopeful for the 2008 games in Beijing.
    There are a few table tennis hotbeds in this country, and the Bay Area is one of them, which Shodhan attributes to the large population of immigrants from Asian countries that follow table tennis the way Americans follow baseball. Shodhan was 5 when his father introduced him to the sport in their native India. After his family moved to Fremont in 1984, Shodhan joined a club and started entering tournaments. He didn’t mind putting in hours of practice and went on to win 15 national junior titles. By the time he started college at Cal in 1996, he was rated high enough to pursue a spot on the 2000 U.S. Olympic team. Shodhan finished seventh at the trials and earned an alternate slot on the doubles squad.
    Shodhan, 28, now fulfills what he calls his “table tennis obligation” by competing in the Northern California Table Tennis League, which he founded two years ago. Olympians Michael Hyatt and Khoa Nguyen and U.S. national team member Barney Reed Jr. have all participated. Last season’s MVP was former top-ranked junior Freddie Gabriel, who played for the undefeated league champion Oakland Lions. In addition to his coaching and clinics, Shodhan manages the league’s Web site (www.norcaltabletennis.com), where you can find recaps of the matches, player bios and a schedule of upcoming tournaments. Shodhan would like to see his league go national, and he hopes more sponsors will sign on. “I want to use the league as a vehicle to allow kids to continue playing,” he says.
    To increase his chances of making the 2008 U.S. Olympic team, Shodhan plans to hire a practice partner to prepare for the first stage of the trials in January. He looks forward to the five-hour practices. “To be successful at something you really have to have a passion for it. I’m pretty sure this is my passion.”                

 
 —By Sarah Thurmond