In Antioch, they want pingpong

Forget football, basketball and baseball. Students at Antioch Community High School are bouncing around an idea for a different kind of sports team.

This week, students will iron out plans for the school's first pingpong club, an idea served up by first-year teacher and avid player Chris Stanich.

"I started asking around and it turns out I have a lot of kids who like to play as well," said Stanich, 24. "I mentioned it in passing, as something we might want to try, but the kids never gave up. If it wasn't for their persistence we wouldn't have gotten this far."

Antioch Community High School Principal Mike Nekritz said there are eight pingpong tables available and the club can begin as soon as it is warm enough for the spring sports to be held outside so there is room in the gym for the tables.

Antioch joins several other suburban high schools that have opted to offer students paddles in addition to bats and balls for after school entertainment.

Libertyville High School students have been playing pingpong on Friday afternoons for the last four years.

Jeremy Marino, one of the club's advisers, said while the game seems to be a fairly new phenomenon among high school students, he recently found old yearbooks with photos of Libertyville students playing pingpong at school decades ago.

The game has also caught on at the middle school level.

Dan Henneberry, athletic director at Oak Grove Junior High School in Green Oaks, said a student's sibling was on the team at Libertyville High School and introduced it at Oak Grove.

Now about a dozen Oak Grove students show up weekly to play.

"It seems like an odd thing to do, but once you mention it, you realize a lot of schools are doing it," Henneberry said. "I mean, it's pingpong. It lends itself to all ages and ability levels."

So far, all of the pingpong clubs are strictly for fun. In fact, a spokesman for the Illinois High School Association said she doesn't think the game will ever be considered a competitive sport.

That's fine with Marino, who said he wouldn't mind playing Stevenson or another high school for fun, but would hate to see the game turned into a competition.

"It's one of those things that is a good outlet for kids," Marino said. "Too many things have turned competitive and serious. I don't ever want to be holding up a trophy shouting out 'We beat Stevenson.'"