ROHAN BUBNA (12): “I first played table tennis at my friend’s house when I was nine years old, and I really liked it. My favorite player is Koki Niwa, and after I watched him, I felt that he’s really cool and good at playing. There was also a table tennis place five minutes from my house, so I just walked there and played. I play at Table Tennis America, and it’s been eight years since I started. When I started, I had lots of fun and it was really easy to improve. But then, near the middle, I felt like I was plateauing and not getting any better. It was hard, but after I chilled and had more fun with it, then I got better.
To me, table tennis is a serious hobby. Right now, I’m doing college applications and looking for places that have good table tennis teams. There are a few colleges, like Virginia Tech and Texas Wesleyan, that give scholarships for table tennis.
A typical training session starts with warm ups. You do five minutes of forehand and five minutes of backhand. Afterwards, the coach may also have some drills for you, too. It’s usually two backhands, two forehands, or maybe one backhand push, and something else. You typically do a few of those drills, and at the end of the session, you just play friendly matches. During these, my favorite play would be trying to force the error from my opponent and get a high ball. Then smashing that high ball, I guess it’s fun. Sometimes the coach will make you run or do some physical exercise.
That’s just the general training. Right before a competition, you would play a bunch of practice matches just to get more ready. Some competitions I’ve done are the US Nationals and US Open which happen twice a year and are the biggest ones. When I was in freshman year, I played in the US Nationals. They have different rating events based on how good you are. In the under 1300 rating event, I got second place, so I was really happy. Since then I got a few more of those medals. I won second place in the under 2000 division at one of the recent competitions. The rating system is from 0 to 3000. Right now I’m at 2200, but I’m hoping to get better and win more medals.
A defining moment for me was when I was in seventh or eighth grade. It was the first time I went to a tournament where you had to fly somewhere. I flew to Texas with all my friends, and the venue was so big! I was really excited to just be able to play all day with my friends and watch the best players play. After this, table tennis felt so exciting to me. I wanted to play more and decided I wanted to be really good.”
