Christian Mard is a junior at FSU studying Mechanical Engineering and is the current President of the FSU Table Tennis sports club. He is currently looking forward to October 24th where he and the club will travel down to Lakeland, Florida to compete in “Florida Orange Blossom Table Tennis Series Fall Classic Open 2014”. One thing is certain, after spending time with Christian Mard, table tennis is not the casual game you played in your high school gym when your teacher announced that today was a free day. In fact, I would even bet against you calling it table tennis, instead you probably referred to it as Ping-Pong. Christian let me in on the secret that calling the sport Ping-Pong is an apparent “no no” in the community and an easy way to spot an unconscious casual player.
Mallory West: Have you ever made the mistake of calling it Ping-Pong?
Christian Mard: It was the first class of College Algebra of my freshman year and our professor did the whole dreaded lets go around the room and introduce ourselves by saying something we like to do in our free time bit. So long story short when it was my turn to introduce myself I called it Ping-Pong and it was just my luck that the teacher ended up being a member of the FSU club. He sort of made fun of me for calling it that, but after class he gave me the days and times the club practices and said to come on by. I did.
MW: How did you become interested in the sport?
CM: It was sometime during high school. I had only played on a second hand table that I set up in my bedroom that I dumpster dived from my neighbor. The table was pretty poor quality being made out of warped particleboard and the several holes that lined the edges, but it worked.
MW: What does a typical practice involve?
CM: We devote about five or six minutes to warm up our bodies. We then transition into drills for around 2 hours. The first part of the drills involves us warming up our basic strokes: forehand, backhand, pushing, and counter loop. For the other half of the practice time we do personalized drills that focus on aspects of our game that could be improved upon. For example one of my drills that I constantly practice is serving underspin where my partner would push long to my forehand or backhand where I would then loop the ball back. Hitting an underspin ball without netting it isn’t easy and requires an extra bit of practice.
MW: For those interested in the club, what days and times does the club meet?
CM: We meet Monday at 7pm and Friday at 6:30pm. Show up early and help us set up.
MW: Do you guy have any upcoming tournaments for these people interested?
CM: Nov. 9th we have our NCTTA division tournament where the club can represent FSU as a Table Tennis Team, but more importantly the next day Nov. 10th is our FSU Open. The open will include this year a Handicap tournament where depending on rating differences you’ll start at a different point than I. In other words if you were to play me the game would start at 8-0 and you only need 3 more points to win.