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          Front Page  sports



Feud Besets Table Tennis Scene

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.