The following excerpts below were recently featured in our “What’s Happening Now” section above:

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FREE Table Tennis Table

We received an email from a Vancouver family looking to give away an older model Kettler table tennis table. If you are interested in providing a new home for this table, reach out to PingPongInVancouver today! The table is still available as of April 10!!

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The Kids are Alright, Epilogue

Our editor in chief Beeyo attended two days of intense competition at the 2025 BC Secondary Schools Table Tennis Championships on Friday February 28 and Saturday March 1, at Lord Bing Secondary on Vancouver’s west side. Spoiler alert: it was THE best table tennis anyone in BC is likely to see until this fine event comes back around in 2026. Here’s our full report.

New talent at VTTC reminds us that table tennis is growing in BC

We got a call the other day from a VTTC member who reported seeing some fantastic table tennis rallies between two young players, one boy, one girl, both of whom arrived in Canada from Iran over the past couple of years. This info jogged our memory here at the editor’s desk. We recall a young fellow, newly arrived from Iran only weeks before, dispatch the competition at the 2023 BC Secondary Schools Table Tennis Championships, losing only to local powerhouse David Mandelstam in the Boy’s finals. The joy on this kid’s face and the faces of his family members after the finals was something to behold. What an introduction to a new country, eh? We wish both of the young players who dazzled the hoi polloi at VTTC the other day the best in their table tennis and personal development. These kids and the new talent they represent are an antidote for sceptics who believe that table tennis is in decline in BC. It’s a reminder that Vancouver is a destination for people from all over the world who love table tennis. We look forward to seeing some inspirational players arrive over the next few years from Africa, the middle east, Central and South America, Europe and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Of course, more table tennis players requires more table tennis facilities in order to accommodate an increase in demand. Please take the time to reach out to your local community centres and ask for table tennis tables and opportunities to play.

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The Kids Are Alright!

Vancouver’s most inspirational annual table tennis tournament in takes place at the end of this month. Of course, we’re talking about the 52nd edition of the BC Secondary Schools Table Tennis Championships (BCSSTTC), Friday & Saturday, February 28-March 1 at Lord Byng Secondary School. Originally begun back in the seventies by Dr. Chandra Madhosingh, a science teacher at Britannia Secondary in Vancouver, the BCSSTTC has grown over the decades to include dozens of teams and hundreds of participants from secondary schools from around the lower mainland. We encourage fans of the sport to view the action on Saturday from the bleachers at Lord Bing to experience this well-organized event, and see the best of BC’s next generation of table tennis champions in action.

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Just Follow the Bouncing Ball

Happy Lunar New Year to each of you table tennis fans across the internet, and all the best for your game for 2025! As we near the end of this first month of the year, table tennis players here in the lower mainland are hunkered down in spaces big and small, formal and makeshift, trying to coax the best possible game up through the legs and out through a well-aimed forehand or backhand. Most players, myself included, know this is easier said than done. There are so many ways to miss a shot and it all happens in a flash. How can I know which of “my ten most common errors” lead to the ball going off the end of the table or into the net? To answer this question for ourselves, we are required to be sensitive and pay attention to every facet of the game in real time to discern and overcome our multitude of weaknesses. That’s the part of the game that drives many players forward, head-on into the challenge of mastering the sport. Each time an old habit dies, replaced by a stroke governed by precision and strategy, we gain confidence and experience joy. This in turn gets channelled back into the game as we play and the cycle of playing table tennis for the joy of getting better becomes the norm. Trying too hard, expecting too much, chases the joy away, and makes it harder to improve. Consider table tennis to be your meditation. Use it to transcend the stresses of the day. Become drawn into the moment when you engage in our beautiful sport. The editors here at Ping Pong In Vancouver hope each of you finds solace in the game; that table tennis becomes something more than a recreation, that it carries you forward towards greater self-knowledge and peace of mind.

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What’s on the Table for 2025

Inspired by you, our editors have some plans on the table for 2025. Our plans centre around two things: the first, Ping Pong In Vancouver will continue to find ways to improve access to table tennis for everyone, especially here in the centre of Vancouver; the second, we want to create more opportunities for players on our directory to engage with one another. Right now, it’s a simple static cork bulletin board with over one hundred index cards. We can do better. That said, we welcome all of your ideas for improving our players directory and how we can do better as advocates for access to table tennis in the community. Please share your thoughts with your comrades in the Ping Pong In Vancouver community. We will create a post towards the end of January to share the responses and ideas you submit.

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The Present and Future of Table Tennis in BC

As we reflect about our sport near the end of 2024, thoughts about the future of table tennis in BC float through our heads. To that end, our newest post is titled, “The Present and Future of Table Tennis in BC“. In the article, we begin by reflecting on the table tennis scene in the lower mainland over this past year and, based on our insider knowledge and experience, we make predictions for the evolution and/or de-evolution of table tennis in BC in 2025.

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It’s Every Club for Themselves

It’s the beginning of December, a time of year that was –back in my day– traditionally busy with local table tennis events and competitions. But not these days. Events and competitions promoted in the public realm are few and far between. The last public event that everyone everywhere seemed to know about was the Trout Lake Community Centre Table Tennis Tournament. While the event wasn’t great, the tournament organizer promoted the hell out of it online, through posters in the community, and he even donned a sandwich board and walked the promenade at Kits Beach. As a result, the tournament was a sell-out. Best of all, the participants ended up representing a diverse group with respect to age, race, gender and skill levels. Every for-profit club should take a lesson from this. Promote your events broadly. Expect new members. Adapt. Remember that you’re in business to make money and grow. Invite outsiders and grow your membership base. It may lead to your success while helping players like those in our players directory find connections and fulfilment.

On another related note, we notice there are clubs out there who haven’t submitted their info to Ping Pong In Vancouver. Hey table tennis clubs: why is this? Do you not want between 500-1000 potential members to check out your club through our website each month? If your table tennis club is strictly a secret society whose location and activities are to be kept secret, then no, don’t tell us about your club. The bottom line, if your table tennis club is not listed here on PingPongInVancouver.com, then you’re missing out.

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TTBC Call It Quits

A bit of a shocker: TTBC, the fledgling non-profit with a mission to build table tennis in BC has called it quits. According to TTBC founder and vice-president William Vrabel, there was not enough interest from table tennis communities in BC in changing the status quo and membership sales were flat after 6 months of promoting the venture. TTBC and its website, TTBC.ca launched back in March 2024 with the hope of ultimately replacing the BCTTA as the PSO for table tennis in BC.

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We Invite All Table Tennis Clubs to Submit a Post

We received a message from a reader who thanked us for creating this resource but also lamented on how they wished all table tennis clubs could be included in our directory. Well, good news: most clubs are included (yes, GVTTC, too). However, if your fave club, small or big, is not included, contact PingPongInVancouver with the club’s address, contact info, images, descriptions, hours of operation, cost, etc. We will be happy to post the info, and maybe even drop by for a visit.

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We Made An Error

We reported last week about how the BCTTA is co-hosting a tournament on November 17 at the GVTTC titled “The BC Elementary Schools Table Tennis Championships” that doesn’t actually involve the participation or cooperation of elementary schools or school boards. We reported that the tournament historically involved the participation of these organizations. We were wrong. The tournament doesn’t traditionally involve schools or teachers, unlike the annual BCSSTTC tournament; instead, it involves just elementary school aged kids who enter as individuals. That said, why the misleading tournament title?

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Chandra Madhosingh inducted into the BC Sports Hall Of Fame, Class of 2025

Our friends over at TTBC are happy to announce their hard work to prepare and submit a bid for Chandra’s induction into the BC Sports Hall Of Fame has paid off. Chandra was inducted along with 15 other sporting greats from across the province including Rossland’s mountain biking legend Cindy Devine, soccer superstar Christine Sinclair and one of Canada’s most successful weightlifting coaches Wes Woo. Read more here.

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Overcrowding at VTTC

Last week we mentioned how VTTC has dropped its discounted, non-primetime rate. This week it’s time to talk about the increasing overcrowding at VTTC. Our editors are there regularly on Tuesday afternoons, paying the $10 drop-in to get in 3-4 sessions of 20 minutes each. By 5pm this past Tuesday, two-thirds of the eight tables were being used for one-on-one coaching, making money for the club owners and coaches while the hoi-polloi sat around vying for the two or three remaining tables, all at prime time! Clearly, Vancouver needs more options than this single overcrowded, poorly-ventilated club. The solution is to create table tennis programs within the shared spaces of community centres, community halls and churches.

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VTTC Drops Discounted Pass

We found out by chance the other day that VTTC (Vancouver Table Tennis Club) has dropped their generous non-prime time discount offer whereby players could play from 11:00am to 3:00pm daily for only $280 per year. Regular annual memberships now exceed $580 per year. An influx of players from the now defunct Bridgeport Table Tennis Club motivated the owners of VTTC to drop the discount and go for the cash grab. Naturally.

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An Interview with Table Tennis BC, TTBC

As September drew to a close, we sat down for coffee on a sunny fall afternoon with TTBC’s William Vrabel to find out how things are coming along with the new non-profit table tennis advocate. As you’ll read, things are moving along quickly and there’s a lot of excitement in the air about the possibilities of a new era of unity for table tennis in BC. Read the interview.

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YES! We Do Read Your Submissions!

A reader from Mount Pleasant submitted a “Ping Pong In A Park Near Me” survey form suggesting that table tennis tables in China Creek Park, Sahali Park (at Fraser & 7th Avenue), and Guelph Park would be a great idea. The reader ended the survey with a note of pessimism by asking if we even read these submissions. Well, not only do we read them, we generally post each request on our “wish-map” of where residents would like to see ping pong tables in a park near them. And we will do the same with this request. The point is this. We read your suggestions and we dream along with you. It’s specific people who don’t read your posts who are the problem. Bureaucrats from Vancouver Parks Board, indeed, managers from the City of Vancouver with any influence continue to ignore our website and our cause and remain unwilling to acknowledge our quiet advocacy for table tennis in Vancouver parks. May we suggest taking matters into your own hands by writing to Vancouver Parks Board officials? When decision-makers hear frequently and repeatedly from concerned residents who want to see a table tennis table in a park near them, the more these public servants may be moved towards action. Please help us advocate for table tennis tables in parks. Thank you.

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Players Directory Hits 100 Players!

With the latest addition of the latest player Matt to the cork bulletin board, the total number of table tennis players looking for playing partners hit 100 this morning. How many are current, we don’t know. But we encourage you to reach out and find common ground around the table. Of course, now that we’ve reached 100 players, Ping Pong In Vancouver has to celebrate. Stay tuned and tell your ping pong pals about us 🙂

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Hayahisa Tomiyasu: How A Ping Pong Table Became A Source Of Fascination

A great big thank you to Lance Chung, a table tennis fan and executive director of the Point Grey Village BIA, for sending in a link to this wonderful article from WeTransfer about a photographer who stumbled upon and began to document the life of a table tennis table in a park in Leipzig, Germany. It’s a poetic photo-documentary and a quick read for anyone interested in seeing a ping pong table introduced to a park near you. Read the article here.

Point Grey Village Plaza Outdoor Table tennis Tournament, Finals & Community Party

The quarters, semis and final matches have now concluded at the 2-week long Point Grey Village Outdoor Table Tennis Tournament. The final 8 players who’d emerged victorious from the round robin groups and round of 16 faced-off in a single-elimination tournament on Saturday, September 14. Neighbours and curious onlookers joined us for the event under cloudy but mainly dry skies from 12-3pm at the Point Grey Village Plaza, 10th and Sasamat Street. Photos and write-up here.

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Table Tennis BC: A Progress Report

Table Tennis BC or TTBC called the other day to let us know what’s been going on. As you know, TTBC is the new kid in town when it comes to BC’s growing list of sports-related non-profits. The founders of TTBC, all life-long table tennis competitors, are dedicated to building an agency that fully supports of all the many diverse table tennis communities and clubs across BC. It’s been four months since TTBC (Sport & Recreation) Society’s inception and from what we’ve seen from a new website, they’re making speedy progress gearing up to sell annual memberships, while in the real time, they’ve got boots on the ground making connections with players and clubs across BC. We really wish them the best and our editors are lined up to join once the TTBC Online Store is open.

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Speaking of outdoor table tennis…

We’ve been receiving suggestions via this form from readers over the past several years who would like to see table tennis in a park near where they live or work. Granted, it’s an uphill battle with city officials consistently ignoring all our formal attempts to attract their attention on this issue. Maybe you can help. Read more here.

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Entries are now closed for the FREE Point Grey Village Outdoor Table Tennis Tournament

Thanks to everyone who registered for the Point Grey Village Outdoor Table Tennis Tournament. The response from our readers was overwhelming. In just 3 days we received more than 50 entry forms. From those 50 entries, we drew the names of 32 players to form the 8 round robin groups of 4. Participants will be vying for more than $500 in cash and prizes as this unique 2-week long “linear” tournament gets underway from August 26th to September 10. Quarter-final, semi-final and final matches will be held at a community party on September 14 from noon to 3pm, with everyone welcome to attend! Read more here.

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The Greater Vancouver Table Tennis Club, aka Sperling, LIVES!

Contrary to a popular rumour we heard from members around the tables at VTTC on Tuesday, the Greater Vancouver Table Tennis Club, aka Sperling, has NOT closed. When we rode over on Thursday August 22 to confirm or refute the rumour, we found the club not only open but also busy. Staff at the club were surprised to hear a rumour of their demise. We think the rumour may stem from competition among clubs for players. In any event, the rumour has been refuted. Play on!

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The Table at The Stack

It’s official. With a new table along the public plaza the Stack, a gleaming, striking, office tower at 1133 Melville Street, OXFORD Property management now has three buildings in the downtown core with table tennis tables. Kudos to the team at OXFORD for bringing table tennis closer to where people work and play. Read our assessment here.

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A New Ping Pong Table Arrives at Point Grey Village Plaza

As you know, Vancouver is less than open to embracing table tennis as a public activity. That close-minded attitude towards our sport remains the default setting unless acted upon by an outside force. The outside force in this instance was a request by the cool and hip Point Grey Business Improvement Association who asked for a table tennis table for an existing community plaza located at Sasamat and 10th Avenue on the city’s west side. Ken Sims and friends, always fiscally-minded, lurched into action by relocating an existing ping pong table from the north end of the Cambie Street Bridge. (It appears that the number of outdoor table tennis tables in Vancouver is currently maxed-out and tables can only be moved from one place to another). Nonetheless, it’s great to see the Tiger Ping Pong-brand table set safely and thoughtfully in its own space on the plaza among the picnic tables. Read our review here.

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Thank you so much for reading, we hope you continue to enjoy this ad-free, crap-free website, and keep chasing that small white ball! Namasté.

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Table Tennis Makes it to the Front Page of the NY Times!

How many times has this happened to you? You’re having a conversation about sports with somebody you’ve just met. If you answer “table tennis” when asked what sport you personally excel at, chances are the person you’re chatting with will say, “Oh, I play ping pong, we should have a match!” In this NY Times article, elite table tennis players from north America in particular describe how they’re challenged constantly by nearly anyone who’s picked up a racquet. This has to do with table tennis’ reputation in Canada and the USA as merely an idle past-time, an easy activity that anyone can master almost immediately. How did we arrive at this conclusion? Read more here.

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Olympics on CBC Gem

As we’ve been witnessing through CBC’s streaming service Gem, there has been some incredible table tennis coverage since the first day of competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics. The camera work is incredible. Multiple cameras. Innovative angles. Up close and personal. The crowds are loud, passionate and dressed in sync with their country’s colours, and animated like what you’d see at a major league hockey play-off game. The matches are what you’d expect from the world’s best players at the most important tournament on earth. We’re not here to spoil anything so get out there and see for yourself. It’s a guarantee you will play a better and more inspired game next time you play after watching.

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TTBC is TT for Me!

There is very good news for the future of table tennis in British Columbia in the form of TTBC, Sport & Recreation Society, a newly minted non-profit dedicated to building the sport of table tennis in BC. We mentioned TTBC briefly on this page a few months back when it was officially registered as a non-profit, starting out with nothing more than a idealistic plan and high hopes for success. Since that initial introduction, TTBC’s broad and all encompassing mission has been fine-tuned to focus on a multi-pronged grassroots approach to developing table tennis in BC. First, TTBC will focus on bringing table tennis to communities through events and promotions to build a more positive public profile for table tennis. Second, TTBC will focus on building the next generation of players through innovative ways of bringing table tennis into elementary and secondary schools. Third, TTBC will address the shortage of table tennis clubs by working with community centres and other facilities with large spaces such as churches and community halls to create accessible programs for children, adults and seniors. Fourth, TTBC will be applying for all available public funding and will be accepting donations from the public to fuel their ambitious agenda. Fifth, TTBC will be completely accountable for all dollars raised and spent on programs. All of this is very refreshing to our ears which have been filled over the past year with many, many voices of discontent from our readers about the current PSO (Provincial Sports Organization), the BCTTA. The most common serious issue reported by our readers about the BCTTA is the total lack of any sort of junior development programs that aren’t designed simply to make money for the quasi-defunct Bridgeport Table Tennis Club. Parents are understandably pissed-off and they want an alternative. With that in mind, we wish our friends at TBBC all the best and we will reporting on their progress regularly.

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The Church Table Tennis Club Closes

Heaven-sent. Too good to be true. These were some of the attributes of the Church Table Tennis Club, a divine but short-lived pop-up ping pong parlour in the middle of a nice big church, now closed permanently. The building was sold. We’re leaving the post up for posterity because it was such a nice space to play.

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Our Players Directory Now Totals 85 Participants!

If you haven’t checked it out already, visit our Players Directory page where table tennis players like you out there in the ping pong wilderness can find playing partners with whom to share your love of the sport. As of August 7th, we have around 85 players who have left their info card on the bulletin board. How many postings are active? That’s a good question! We encourage you to add your name, call others on the list, and meet new friends.

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The BCTTA Goes Rogue!

For the record, we’d rather be focusing on lighter topics but reporting on the bizarre antics of the secretive and opaque BC Table Tennis Association or BCTTA is hard to turn away from. We’ve been following this official PSO or Provincial Sports Organization for a little over a year now, ever since we received a insider’s report on how this Table Tennis Canada-appointed agency fails to serve the greater table tennis community in BC. To get up to speed on the current BCTTA, we recommend you read these articles. To those readers who are already familiar with the BCTTA, you won’t be surprised to know the antics just keep getting stranger and less connected to reality.

Here’s what we have found out over the past couple of weeks. First off, the BCTTA is not currently listed as the table tennis PSO on the SportBC website. Indeed, there is no table tennis PSO listed. Second, we contacted ViaSport, the agency that funds official PSO’s, and we discovered the BCTTA was currently NOT listed as a supported PSO. We called ViaSport to confirm that the BCTTA was not listed because it was out of compliance with ViaSport for a variety of reasons. We also heard from ViaSport that the BCTTA has not responded to multiple attempts by Via Sport to engage with them.

Meanwhile, over at Table Tennis Canada or TTCanada, the so-called National Sports Agency or NSO for table tennis, the directors have assigned the 2025 national table tennis championships, both seniors and juniors to –drum-roll, please– the BCTTA!! If you are surprised to hear this after all you’ve read and heard about the BCTTA, don’t be. From what we have heard from table tennis players in BC, TTCanada is completely out of touch with what is going on in BC. Their position vis-a-vis the BCTTA is described over and over again by those we spoke with as a “head-in-the-sand” attitude. It appears to us that TTCanada, sadly, is staffed and managed by lifers in the sport, table tennis players with seemingly no other necessary qualifications who have gone straight from playing the sport to important administrative positions at the national level. As a group, they resist contact do not return repeated emails or calls. Meanwhile, the TTCanada website is a confusing, frustrating, and amateurish production with virtually no information about anything regarding the sport of table tennis but the very tip of the competitive spear, while completely ignoring the grassroots needs of TT players across the country. To TTCanada, the BCTTA is loyal friend and long-time partner and hence the disconnect: the BCTTA is awarded the national championships despite it non-compliance with provincial regulating agencies and the withdrawal of its funding from those agencies.

Like we said, this only gets stranger and we will be following up with a full report on what we’ve found out! Stay tuned!

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Just In: An Anonymous Tip Regarding the BCTTA!

We received this information today, July 7, via the PPinVancouver contact form:

“I want to report that BCTTA is now “forcing” the national players to train at their Bridgeport center, which is small and hot because it lacks air conditioning, especially during this heat wave. I suggest you find a reporter to bring a thermometer and cover the story at around 4:00 July 7!”

Thanks for the tip! We’d love to send someone over the their headquarters at the now-seriously-downsized Bridgeport Table Tennis Club but our staff are generally regarded as “personas non gratis” by the BCTTA and, unless heavily disguised, we wouldn’t get in. However, we do invite the public to see for yourselves the sad state of the current BCTTA by dropping in to watch the players, who have paid undisclosed sums of money, train under these harsh conditions.

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Tonnes More Outdoor Table Tennis Courts To Review… But None In Vancouver

According to Michael & Rachel Pedernal, our volunteer “eyes on the street”, there are numerous outdoor table tennis courts springing up in municipalities around Vancouver. Meanwhile, the bureaucrats who make decisions about Vancouver’s parks continue to nix the idea of table tennis in parks. We don’t know the reasons why Vancouver is so table tennis-unfriendly because city officials will not respond to calls or emails from our editors. Someone recently suggested to us that it’s because the Vancouver Parks Board is “high on grass”, as in: they love the look of unbroken expanses of grass unsullied by recreational infrastructure. We’ve said it before: if you believe table tennis tables belong in Vancouver’s parks, you must say something to city officials. These putzes need to hear from you as they are not listening to PingPongInVancouver.com!

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Summer Camps for Table Tennis

Put down your gadgets and pick-up your racquet! Don’t miss this opportunity for your ping pong crazy kids to train with Canada’s most experienced table tennis coach and all-round TT ambassador Luba Sadovska at her North Shore Table Tennis Club. We met Coach Luba couple of years ago when we reviewed the North Shore Table Tennis Club and we were blown-away by the fact she had done so much to develop the club and its range of programs. Here’s more information about Coach Luba’s summer table tennis camps for kids. Or if you’re ready to register, click here.

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Time To Induct Chandra Madhosingh

If you’ve not heard of Chandra Madhosingh, he is widely considered to be the father of organized table tennis in BC. The arc of the sport in BC from its rapid growth in the 70’s and its heyday in the early 80’s to today’s decline follows the man’s own life. This editor is currently working against the clock with a small group of friends to complete the paperwork in a bid to have Chandra elevated to the BC Sports Hall Of Fame, his remarkable body of work noted and memorialized for generations to come. It’s a no-brainer, really, as there is nobody currently representing our very popular sport in the museum’s collection. We have until the end of the month to complete and submit our bid so pardon our absence from manning and updating the website until July 1. See you Canada Day!

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Cosports Summer League

For all you competitive players in the Tri-Cities area and beyond, Cosports Table Tennis Club is hosting a summer table tennis league organized by renowned TT competition master, Pun Chu and friends. Pun has organized a table tennis tournament or two and one day we hope to nab him to oversee a future PingPongInVancouver tournament. Cosports is an excellent table tennis facility so grab a few friends, form a team and register by 5:00pm June 18 to make the roster.

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Ping Pong Versus Pickleball

The comparison was inevitable. In this upcoming post we compare table tennis and pickleball from the POV of someone considering taking up a new racquet sport. Stay tuned for this report in the coming weeks.

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Still Waiting a Response from the BCTTA

As reporters of the table tennis scene in Vancouver and beyond we like to represent all sides to a story whenever possible. Recently we’ve published several articles on the failure of the BC Table Tennis Association (BCTTA) to live up to its mandate to work with other stakeholders to develop the sport of table tennis in BC. Every word of what was reported so far comes from the mouths of those we spoke within the table tennis community. Earlier this month, we emailed BCTTA President Amelia Ho and the BCTTA board of the directors asking for their side of the story. So far, we have not heard back from Amelia Ho and the BCTTA and, to be honest, we don’t expect to hear back.

We will continue to publish what we hear from you about the BCTTA. Our next article, due out in early June focuses on the BCTTA’s sham Elementary Schools Championships last February and how no officials from any school district were informed of or involved in the event.

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Outdoor Table Tennis Court Reviews Resume

Don’t get us wrong, we love the rain. What’s lousy for the outdoor game is good for everything that lives and grows. But we are optimistic fairer weather will prevail. With a fresh new month ahead, and a long list of sites to check out, we’ll be hopping on our bikes to report additional outdoor table tennis courts in the lower mainland. A big thanks to outdoor TT fans Michael and Rachel Pedernal for providing us with a bunch sites to explore! Stay tuned…

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The VOOTTT: Cancelled for 2024

Vancouver’s first outdoor table tennis tournament aka the VOOTTT, (Vancouver Open Outdoor Table Tennis Tournament) has been cancelled this year as we did not meet our minimum entries for each of the three categories of competition: beginner, intermediate and advanced. FREE to enter, the VOOTTT was supposed to be a unique month-long tournament where participants arrange to play according to draw matches at any outdoor table tennis court and then report the results here on Ping Pong In Vancouver. Undeterred, we will try again next year, same time, same event. In the meantime, go outside and play table tennis! Many, many thanks to the hard-core outdoor table tennis fans who did enter.

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Ping Pong In Paris

With our pockets full of cash to burn from all the ad revenue we generate off your eyeballs 🙂 we set off for a visit to ping pong-friendly Paris, an incredible city brimming with pre-Olympic activity. To our delight, we discovered a big stash of public and private table tennis opportunities that we describe in this post.

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TTBC is Born!

It’s official, a new non-profit agency dedicated to the development of table tennis in BC was born on March 15.  TTBC Sport & Recreation Society or TTBC was born on March 15! It will become a development hub to serve the 95% of BC table tennis players left on the sidelines by the failure of the BCTTA to engage the greater table tennis community. The official website launch is set for June 2024 but we will provide updates as the new agency develops its governance structure and issues mission statements.

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Nixing the Newsletter

Last month it was decided we would abandon the idea of publishing a quarterly newsletter. The reason we put it to rest is that all we have to say we already say it here on the website. The website is the newsletter. To those of you who have signed-up: thanks for your interest and we have deleted your email addresses, as we should.

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Meet Secret Weapon Sports

We are also super-excited to announce Jason Li and his company Secret Weapon Sports as our exclusive event sponsor for the VOOTTT, World Table Tennis Day, and all other events we stage. Jason is committed to supporting the table tennis community and will be contributing prizes and providing technical expertise. Stay tuned for more details as planning for Vancouver’s first outdoor table tennis tournament continues! Meanwhile, read our introduction to Secret Weapon Sports here.

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Our World Table Tennis Day Week-Long Event Concludes

Our 2024 World Table Tennis Day week-long event has finished. We had invited fans of the sport to join us and our event sponsor Secret Weapon Sports, to go play table tennis with friends anywhere indoors or outdoors the week of April 16-23 to celebrate the ITTF Foundation’s World Table Tennis Day (WTTD) which falls on April 23 each year. We asked you to call up friends to play, take some pics, and report your event to PPinVan and qualify for prizes from Secret Weapon Sports to be drawn on Friday, April 26. While we did have 2 or 3 submissions, we had optimistically hoped for more but, as with the VOOTTT, we remain undeterred and will be staging another event in celebration of WTTD in 2025. Many thanks to Linson and Rachel for staging 3 events over the week to celebrate WTTD!!

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The BCTTA Headquarters Downsizes

We’ve just been informed that members of Bridgeport Table Tennis Club, the BCTTA’s downtrodden home club, arrived to find their club had been radically downsized overnight without any warning to members. Needless to say, we are excited by the schadenfreude news, but we also feel empathy towards long-term club members who have been let down by the BCTTA president, the club’s owner. We feel your pain. The entire table tennis community has been feeling the pain of the BCTTA’s negligence for years now. Meanwhile, get to know what we’ve learned over the past 6 months about the BCTTA in this article, The BCTTA: Then and Now.

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Preparing for next year’s VOOTTT

If you’re considering entering next year’s VOOTTT, you’ll want to read this article on how best to prepare for playing table tennis outdoors. Much of the information presented here draws from a collection of ideas and observations about the outdoor game by a guy named Gus T. Winz, an early advocate of outdoor table tennis. Check out the post here.

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Positive changes to VTTC

The venerable VTTC or Vancouver Table Tennis Club has extended their hours of operation, now opening at 11:00am Monday to Saturday. This will go a long way towards reducing the crowds at peak times. They’re also offering a discounted “off-peak” yearly membership for $280. It’s intended for those who like to play from 11:00am to 3:00pm Monday to Saturday only.

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Barriers To Table Tennis Access

Advocating for the sport of table tennis at all levels is the most important of the three essential tasks of our mission here at Ping Pong In Vancouver. In the 4 years of our mission we have become very familiar the landscape of barriers impeding access to table tennis in our communities and schools. Here’s our report.

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Induct Dr. Madhosingh

Our first important task of the spring season is to promote Dr. Chandra Madhosingh’s inclusion into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. Chandra, as he was known to all, passed away in December of 2022 after 60 years of service to the sport locally, provincially, nationally and internationally. To those in the know, he is the father of table tennis in BC. We encourage you to read our article and cast your symbolic vote for Chandra’s induction into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. Take a few minutes to watch the video at the end of Peter Joe’s memories of Chandra. It’s a NFB documentary of the 1973 Canada-China Ping Pong Diplomacy tour. A must see for TT fans.

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Investigating Today’s BCTTA

Have you ever wondered why organized table tennis is nonexistent in BC despite there being an authorized sports governing agency? For answers, read the article from William Vrabel, a former communications director with the BC Table Tennis Association (BCTTA). It’s an insightful read on how the original BCTTA has been usurped by local table tennis club owner Amelia Ho to the exclusion of all other stakeholders. Read the full story here.

More on the current BCTTA: We’ve decided to take a look ourselves into this provincially and nationally funded “organization” in a series of posts beginning with this review of Bridgeport Table Tennis Club, the exclusive home of the BCTTA. In a subsequent article, the “The BCTTA: Then and Now“, we compared the broad mandate of the original BCTTA with today’s BCTTA which, from what we’ve heard from dozens of players, is focused on generating revenue for a table tennis club in Richmond. In the near future, we hope to share stories from kids and parents who were left out in the cold by this BCTTA, overcharged for mandatory training, and overlooked for team selections. We’ll continue to wonder out loud why funding agencies like ViaSport are loath to take a deep look into the BCTTA’s governance. As astute and unbiased reporters, we have also asked TT Canada and Viasport for their comments. Stay tuned.