The ying-yang quality of ping pong foretells its fate. If history is any indication, this game of give and take may be just the thing to bring about gender harmony in sports. Early in the 70's, the fifth best American player refused to play his opponent because she was a woman. Today, the fifth best American player IS a woman.
To get ping pong noticed in America, we need to draw people's attention to this closing gender gap. Colleges should lead the way. Ping pong is already gender-integrated in most colleges. We need to make that official.
In order to make ping pong a unisex sport, women-only events must go. In return, an affirmative-action program should be launched to increase women participation. Besides a strong recruiting campaign, there should be scholarships for women and an application to NCAA under the gender-equity guidelines. This would encourage participation at the high school level.
Eventually, we want to recruit world-class women coaches from around the world. They could provide additional training to women players with the aim of erasing the gender gap completely. The immediate task at hand is to get enough women to play so that today's highly disproportional men-women ratio will approach unity.
Encouraging women to play this sport will also benefit the sport of ping pong in general. During the last half century, ping pong has pulled China out of her drought in international competitions, and has given her recognition in the greater world community through Ping Pong Diplomacy. At the moment, China is ping pong’s number one fan by being the home to the largest group of players. But China comprises only one fifth of the world’s population, while women represent half.
China and Sweden have demonstrated that strong teamwork in training is key to raise the levels of their players. Women could overcome their late start on ping pong by better organizational effort and stronger teamwork than the men.
Here are some actions for tempering the fate of ping pong:
1. Make all college ping pong competitions gender-blind by default.
2. Introduce fixed rules on gender mixing in team events to reward women participation.
3. Announce the unisex nature of ping pong, along with the schedule of an intramural tournament, in the school newspaper.
4. Recruit women players, making a special effort to attract those that have ability in a closely related sport, such as tennis.
5. Write to the Dean of Student Affairs, asking for approval from the President to apply to the NCAA through the Division of Gender Equity.
6. Work closely with the NCAA Gender Equity staff to make special accommodations for this first-of-its-kind, unisex sport that will make great strides towards achieving gender equity.
7. Establish an Advisory Board for the National Collegiate Table Tennis (NCTT) Association with the purpose of soliciting scholarship funds, which could come from the Board member affiliations, such as the USATT, equipment manufacturers and the various college alumni associations.
8. The Advisory Board can also serve as an external arm of NCTT to promote high school ping pong and recruit women coaches, as well as maintain continuity in the affairs of NCTT.
Colleges will anchor this 4-leg relay to promote ping pong. Their role is to make ping pong a unisex NCAA sport. Then the second leg involves high schools providing the grass root programs to train women players. With ping pong well established as a unisex sport in the academics, the USATT should start the third leg to make ping pong unisex in America. This then would allow the ITTF to finish the relay by making ping pong the first modern sport that is unisex.
