72 years of teaching juniors
and adults the sport of Table Tennis
(click on to read new article in USA Table Tennis Magazine
on 72 years of teaching kids table tennis in South Bend)
-1-
South Bend’s Contribution to U.S. Table Tennis -- Part I
By Tim Boggan, (click to read hall of fame write-up) USTTA Historian
(Note. This article, only the first part of which is printed in this issue, was
“commissioned,” you might say, by Brad Balmer of the south Bend Recreation Table
Tennis Club who, as Tournament. Coordinator and table tennis history buff,
induced me to come back to South Bend for the May 27-29, 1995 $10,000 St. Joseph
Valley North American Championship held on the Notre Dame campus. My return to
South Bend had a built-in appeal for me, for when, at 19, I accidentally found
out from another student at the University of Dayton that there was a USTTA and
what you’d call a Tournament Circuit, I began for the first time to play table
tennis in earnest, and the St. Joe Valley Open was the first away-from-home
tournament I ever attended. From 1950-1956—that is, until my retirement, or what
until 1965I thought would be my retirement from the sport, I never missed going
to the St. Joe. This spring, after 40 years, I finally returned…to South Bend,
but not to the John Varga-dominated
YMCA
(click on to see history of 'Y) at
the corner of Main and Wayne
where in January of 1950 I’d lost my first “away” match, 27-25 in the 5th.
There, since my first-round opponent was as brash as I was, Varga himself—a very
fair and considerate Varga. I remember—thought, finally, he'd be deuced
if he didn’t, toward the end of that exasperating last game, come out to
umpire.)
In order that readers might best understand what South Bend table tennis has
meant to the USTTA/USATT over the decades, I’ve begun by setting the necessary
context of table tennis in Indiana both before and after Varga’s 1937 arrival
and focused on Betty Henry
and Mary Baumbaugh, the first of the remarkable number of young,
Varga-coached U.S. Champions and/or World Team members that the Annual South
Bend YMCA tournament, the St. Joe Valley Open, showcased from the 1930’s through
the early ‘60’s.
In Part II, I’ll briefly describe the accomplishments of South Bend’s Varga-coached U.S. Champions, Richard Leviton, Gordon Barclay, Bill Early, Ron and Carolee Liechty, John Kromkowski, Forrest Milbourn, and Dave and Sharlene Krizman, and I’ll let some of them tell you what they thought of their very authoritarian but very successful Coach..
Hopefully, readers will then be the more receptive to a Part III article on how, after a 30-year lapse, that South bend/St. Joe Valley tradition of coaching and fine play has recently (from 1993 to the present) been revived. Central to this table tennis continuity is the sense of community the Club offers, particularly vis-à-vis the young players, their parents, and the Club’s Head Coach, as typified, first, by the legendary Varga, and then in the 1990’s by another, quite different European-immigrant Coach Victor Tolkachev.
Those interested in the Sport’s organized beginnings in the U.S. will recall that in 1928 the American Ping-Pong Association was formed in New York by Parker Brothers, and that it had both a Western (that is, Midwest) and a Pacific Coast PPA adjunct. Since a number of players objected to using the required Parker Brothers equipment in APPA tournaments, first the breakaway New York Table Tennis Association was formed in 1931, then, in 1933, the USTTA, one of whose affiliates (as of October 3, 1933) was the Indiana TTA.
Of course players would have to choose between the APPA and the USTTA, but even as late as November, 1933, under Indiana TTA Secretary Bill Fletcher, an all-star Indianapolis team, including among others, Jimmy McClure, Lester Adams, Jerry Jacobs, and Henry Spaulding, got together to play inter-city matches against a Dayton, Ohio team. Some of these Indiana players (most notably McClure) would then go on to play for the APPA, while others (most notably Adams) would play for the USTTA.
As there were now well published leagues and an occasional tournament both in Indianapolis and nearby Richmond, on December 28, 1933 a more organized Indiana TTA elected their 1934 officials, one of whom, the Indiana TTA Secretary, Richard H. Duke, was given titular recognition as a member of the “Advisory Board” of the USTTA official publication Table Tennis Topics.
Along with other prominent or soon to be prominent Indiana, players (including Indianapolis’s Joel Inman and Huntington’s Ned Steele), the 17-year-old McClure entered the 1934 APPA National’s and won his first U.S. Championship (over 16-year-old Billy Condy of Winnetka, Illinois).
Thereafter, in an historic June 23, 1934 meeting in Chicago, representatives of Cleveland, Detroit, Indiana, Missouri, and Omaha PPAs, reportedly representing about a 1000 players, voted to join the USTTA, sounding the imminent death-knell of the APPA. An Indianapolis attorney, Frank B Nusbaum, who’d attended that merger-meeting in Chicago, was named President of the newly formed Indiana TTA, with George H. Cottrell, also of Indianapolis, as Secretary.
When Nusbaum almost immediately became the USTTA’s Recording Secretary, Cottrell took over the Indiana TTA Presidency. As a State Association head, he automatically became, first, a USTTA Vice-President (in December, 1934, one of 18) and then (following a July 17, 1935 USTTA Executive Committee reorganization move that retained the elected Offices of President, Treasurer, and Recording and Executive Secretary but limited the number of Vice-Presidents to three) a member of the newly established USTTA Board of Governors. Theoretically, and I stress theoretically, especially in autocratic President Carl Zeisberg’s days, these 1935 Governors, heads of the then 15 organized State Associations, if forming a solid 2/3 block, could wield great power over even the USTTA President and his Executive Committee, (This “Board of Directors” was finally replaced at the beginning of the 1949-50 season by Affiliates listing).
At
the close of the1934-35 season (following the April 5-7 National’s), Indiana
had 165 USTTA members—5th behind Pennsylvania., Illinois, New Jersey
and New York four states that
between them averaged double Indiana’s membership (this out of a total of 2320
USTTA members from 18 states and the District of Columbia) But by December 31,
1935, Nussbaum, Indiana’s representative on the Executive Committee, had
abruptly retired, and Indiana had only 21 USTTA members, and by February 29,
just 36 days before the close of the ’35-36 season, only 27 members. Moreover,
of the 237 players who entered the 1936, April 2-4, Philadelphia National’s,
only four came from Indiana: three ranked players that year—McClure #1,
Indianapolis’s then but soon Muncie’s new star Earl Coulson #17 (by next season,
after winning the St. Joseph Valley Open,
Earl would be up to #7), and Steele #33—as well as Muncie’s Harry Kitselman.
Nor was the situation any better when at the beginning of the 1936-37 season Cottrell was momentarily succeeded by Fred P. Green, another official from Indianapolis, and father of future 5-time U.S. Women’s Singles Champion Sally Green Prouty. As of November 1, 1936, Indiana still had only 27 USTTA members (Pennsylvania had 593). Obviously the Hoosier-state TTA needed reorganizing—and no doubt some “new blood” impetus to help do it.
