By Toby Smith Journal Staff Writer A first-rate table tennis player,
the possessor of wicked serves, Rick Massoth competes in tournaments across
the Southwest. As skilled as he is, Massoth spends a lot of time these days
just trying to find a place to play. His quest is
reflective of the state of table tennis in Albuquerque.
"There's just not a lot of places where I can hit regularly with good
players," says Massoth, 53, whose last name is pronounced
"Mas-SUT." "The situation is
terrible." Competitive table tennis in Albuquerque,
which can be traced to 1960s, has been troubled not just by the inability to
locate an unused table. Locally, the sport suffers from a long-smoldering
feud.
Searching for a
place Massoth is the president of the
Albuquerque Table Tennis Club, whose members are permitted to play just one
night a week for only two hours at the Alamosa Community Center in the South
Valley. According to Massoth, the ATTC has 65 members,
though not all come on that one night. Massoth says that
if there were one place to play that was open often, that welcomed beginners
as well as elite players, more than 300 people in Albuquerque might show
up. But the city doesn't have such a place. Thus,
high-quality competitors such as Massoth are forced to scramble to
practice. Massoth used to play periodically on the
single table at Carraro's, the Italian restaurant on Vassar
SE. "If you took a step back at one end of that table,
you bumped into some guy on a bar stool," he says. "At the other end, you
might back right into a pool player." Table tennis at
Carraro's ended a few months ago when the restaurant's table
broke. There's also a table at Sneakerz, a sports bar on
San Mateo NE. "That's an OK place," says Massoth laughing, "except when they
have karaoke night. The speakers are right behind you, at ear
level." The Alamosa Community Center has 10 tables,
while most community centers in the city have one or two, and restrictions
when those tables can be used. Now and then Massoth plays at a city senior
center. Yet those centers, which also have few tables, require users to be 50
and over. To tune his game, Massoth likes to hit with younger
people. At Manzano Mesa, a multigenerational community
center, there are two tables, but no one is there to regulate playing
time. The University of New Mexico's Student Union
Building used to have several tables. When the SUB was renovated four years
ago, the tables disappeared. Rio Rancho's Sabana Grande
Recreation Center once attracted many good players to its five tables two
nights a week. Now? All the tables are gone. Seven years
ago, the Albuquerque Table Tennis Club was given use of Alamosa's spacious gym
two nights a week. Last month, the center reduced play there to one night per
week. "It's really sad what has happened here," says
ATTC membership chairman Mike Johnson. Massoth calls the
dearth of places to play "a tragedy."
Different points of view
Some people,
such as Bob Wolfe, a retired businessman, blame Massoth for Albuquerque's
table tennis woes. "I like Rick," says Wolfe, "and I'm a
great booster of table tennis in this city. But Rick brought about a
divisiveness here. That's hurt everything." "Rick is a
good player," says Dennis Gresham, a veteran of the local table tennis scene,
"but he does things that antagonize people." Massoth,
who owns and runs a day care in Albuquerque, shakes his head at such comments.
"All "I've done is try to build up the sport here. For a long time, table
tennis in this city was a closed sport run by a small clique that didn't want
any new blood. I just wanted to change all that."
A game and a sport
Massoth grew up in the Northeast Heights, one of seven children. The Massoth
offspring played pingpong on a hand-painted slab of plywood set on sawhorses
in the back yard. "I could beat all the kids in Princess
Jeanne Park," Massoth remembers. In 1973, when he was
19, Massoth accompanied a friend to the old Manzano Base where, the friend
said, a pingpong club flourished. "They were holding a
little tournament," Massoth says. "I entered, thinking I could beat everyone.
I was placed in the 'E' group, for those with the least ability. I'll win in a
breeze, I thought. Instead, I lost to a 7-year-old girl! She could spin and
she could slam!" When he left that day, "unbelievably
depressed," Massoth knew he had to make a choice. "I
could go home and play a game called pingpong, or I could come back and play
the sport of table tennis." He chose the
latter. He returned to Manzano Base the next week, to
what was the Albuquerque Table Tennis Club. The club had begun in 1969, in the
basement of a UNM medical building, and had grown to about 85
members. Though Massoth yearned to improve, he says
found that was not easy. "Beginners and recreational
players were barely tolerated there. Most members were elitists. They only
wanted to play each other." In time, Massoth says, he
gain some acceptance at the club. He finally beat the 7-year-old girl, the
precocious Toni Gresham. "But it took me a long time."
After a while, the ATTC moved to Monroe Junior High, on Louisiana near Indian
School. Massoth played there and continued to get better. In 1982, he moved to
Houston, where he took a job as a engineer. In Houston,
with its large international population, Massoth's game grew by
leaps.
Adding to his
talent American table tennis players fall
under a rating system of points. Your rating goes up or down, depending on how
you do in sanctioned tournaments. Currently, the highest-rated U.S. player
stands about 2750. The U.S., however, is far behind the rest of the world in
table tennis. In fact, no American man is ranked in the top 100 in the world.
Two U.S. women are in the top 100, though both were reared in
China. When he moved to Houston, Massoth's rating was
1560. In 1995, when Massoth returned to Albuquerque to live, his rating stood
at 1850. According to the U.S. Table Tennis Association,
Massoth has a highest-ever rating of 2023. Back in New
Mexico, Massoth rejoined the Albuquerque Table Tennis Club. It was now located
in the gym of the old Albuquerque High School, but soon moved to East San Jose
Community Center. Over the years, the ATTC has been like
a Bedouin tribe. Carrying its own tables, the club has wandered about the city
in search of a home. Among places the ATTC has set down their tables are the
Boys Club, Kirtland AFB and UNM's SUB. On two occasions members found shelter
at Monroe Junior High. "We've gone wherever we found
hospitality," says the club's founder, Dennis Gresham.
When Massoth returned, he found the club unchanged. "It was still unwelcoming
to newcomers, particularly beginners," he says. "That needed to
change." Dennis Gresham says, "Rick is wrong about us
being unfriendly. We've always had quite a few players who started at a low
caliber and went on to be good." In 2001, Vic Smith, the
club's president for more than 30 years, stepped down because of his wife was
ill. Massoth ran for the post. "Rick wanted it badly and he campaigned
fiercely for it," Dennis Gresham says. Massoth faced Tom
Wintrich, a gifted player, long a familiar face among city players a part of
the sport's national establishment. The Massoth won by one vote. Many club
members protested the results bitterly. When the outcome
held, about two dozen members, including Wintrich, Dennis Gresham, his wife
Liz, and their daughter, Toni, who had grown up to become a highly regarded
player, split from the ATTC. Suddenly, a group who were
passionate about competitive table tennis and who had been responsible for the
organization and growth of the sport in Albuquerque, had no club, no place to
play and no prospects. "It was not a pleasant parting,"
says Dennis Gresham. "There were a lot of real bad
feelings." Most of the anger was pointed at Massoth, and
that ill-will has not lessened. "Rick's mode has always been about power,"
says Dennis Gresham. "He can't even get along with some of his club's
members." Massoth says, "The old clique didn't like what
happened. The newer members did. Frankly, I love playing with beginners and
teaching them." Though he isn't fond of Massoth, Tom
Wintrich admits that there's some truth to what Massoth
says. "The club wasn't always open to recreational
players. Nobody there really wanted to be a coach and you need coaching for a
club to be successful." Calling themselves the New
Mexico Table Tennis Club, the splinter group eventually settled in a small gym
in the Del Norte Sports & Wellness health club on Wyoming NE. Last spring
Sports & Wellness asked the club to fold up their tables and hit the road,
leaving them homeless once more.
Trying to repair a rift "That split
should never have happened," says Bob Wolfe. Wolfe had
organized the first table tennis tournament in Albuquerque, in 1962, sponsored
by the Jaycees. Soon after that he dropped out of the sport to concentrate on
business endeavors. After going years without
exercising, Wolfe says his blood pressure "went haywire." Five years ago, he
decided to pick up a paddle again. "Table tennis saved
my life," says Wolfe, 75. His blood pressure under
control, Wolfe became a local Pied Piper for table tennis. He did not join
either club. Instead, he attempted to mend the fences between the two. He
tried to bring both clubs together with an organization he called the New
Mexico Table Tennis Federation. His plan
failed. "I couldn't do it because there was not a place
where everyone could play." Dennis Gresham is more
candid: "There's no way we will ever come together." The
group of ATTC club members that broke off has since gotten smaller. Last May,
Vic Smith died at age 74. His passing was a severe loss to tournament table
tennis in Albuquerque. Wintrich, who faces hip replacement, says he is
"fading" from the sport. Meanwhile, Dennis Gresham lost his right arm, his
playing arm, to cancer, and he has struggled to play lefthanded. His daughter,
Toni, still plays, but mostly in private homes. In spite
of these setbacks, Dennis Gresham says the NMTTC is "close" to finding a new
home, possibly in a city-run facility. Bob Wolfe, who
plays with a group of all ages and genders at Manzano Mesa, frowns at that
news. "If we had good leadership, if we had a central place to play, if we had
strong youth programs, like soccer does, we wouldn't have all this moving
around, all these grudges. Instead, we'd have 2,000 dedicated people healthily
involved in table tennis in this city." Both Wolfe and
Massoth dream of a building in Albuquerque that could be used solely for table
tennis. Wolfe even covets a spot— on vacant land just west of The Pit. Massoth
wants the building to be shaped like a pentagon, with tables in the five
corners and a big court— "like Wimbledon's"— in the
center. "If you build it," Massoth says, "they will
come." But probably not all of
them. Table tennis Facts you probably didn't
know:
Table tennis was banned in the Soviet Union from about 1930 to 1950. The
sport was believed to be harmful to the eyes.
How many table tennis balls can two players hit back and forth in 60
seconds? The Guiness record is 173, set by Jackie Ballinger and Lisa Lomas in
1993.
Next to soccer, table tennis is the second most popular sport in the
world.
A group of elite Swedish table tennis athletes was in the upper 5 percent
of their age group in terms of aerobic activity.
"Flim-Flam" and "gossima" are names of early versions of table
tennis.
Once upon a time table tennis was played with champagne
corks.
During the 1996 Olympics, the table tennis competition was televised in
every country in the world except the United States.
For years, 21 points won a table tennis game. In 2001, international rules
changed to 11-point games.
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