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Each enthusiastic youngster, Wilczek says, should have “regular practice play…several hours’ serious play almost everyday…practice with opponents of varied styles, not minding if there are among them some players a few shades weaker than he is.” Since a player “is properly coached only if  [in practice]  he does not care for points made or missed, but strives to eliminate his faults,” he can be helped by participating with those weaker than he if he can force his practice partner “into a style of play he [the strongest player] needs to play against to complete his game.”

In addition to these elements of coaching technique, Varga (click to read hall of fame write-up) may also have brought with him from Budapest to South Bend Wilczek’s point of view that “Hungarian players are always modest,” and that, most importantly, they have a strongly defined, traditional relationship with their very serious-minded coach. Consider these comments by Wilczek:

Players and leaders leave no stone unturned to reach big results. The Fanaticism of players is shown in their diligent training, fighting ability in competition and very sporting mood of life before great tournaments. Moreover, their respect and obedience toward their leaders is notable. The fanaticism of leaders unfolds itself in material sacrifices in labor and maintaining full harmony with the players.

One never sees a Hungarian player gainsay the referee, even if his decision hurts the player’s most important match. A Hungarian competitor has no desire to question anything in connection with a tournament, but duly follows his leader’s instructions.

Certainly Varga’s protégés, many of whom were not yet in their teens when he passionately began to coach them, were not expected to question his paternal-like authority.

By the time Varga was 25 he’d served a year in the Hungarian Army, was a Lieutenant in the Reserve, and finally was able to bribe his way out of Hungary and so come to the U.S., to South Bend where his mother, who’d remarried, was living. That summer of ’37 he had a job waiting for him in the Products Division of the Bendix Aviation Corporation. It was probably only coincidental, however, that the badminton, lawn tennis, and sometime table tennis player Walter E. Buettner was a Vice President at Bendix. On the way to being elected “Honorary Vice President” of the USTTA, Buettner had not only been one of the first in the U.S. to urge lowering the net from 6 and ¾ inches to 6 inches, but had been the local official in charge of that 1935 Coleman Clark Circus stop at the South Bend Y.  But since shortly after his arrival John didn’t know where to go to play table tennis in South Bend, likely he’d not had any contact with Buettner.

In the very beginning, while John was making a career for himself as an engineer at Bendix, he probably didn’t really have a lot of time for that which a decade later would make him so well known: playing and coaching table tennis. The first nationally-ranked South Bend players that Varga influenced at least to some extent were, Betty Henry and, then, Mary Baumbaugh. Both were young, single women, both abruptly left the game at the peak of their careers, and both shortly thereafter, married.

Varga himself, who remained single throughout his lifetime, did not accompany either of these young woman to many out-of-town tournaments, certainly not to the extent that he would the South Bend boys and girls he would later champion. No doubt the foremost reason was because he himself, from mid-1937 till mid-1941 did not play that much or as well as he did later when he was in his 30’s and 40’s and a surrogate father-figure to his players. Naturally, he would take great pride in, and strength from, the success of his youthful Champions, and, however modestly, would want to be at the scene of their triumphs. Being so involved, he understandably became a better player himself and gradually rose in the ranks of officialdom to become the President of the Indiana Association, the USTTA Ranking Chair, and a longtime E.C. Vice-President before, in 1956, ill health would force him to retire.

By 1947 John would be well established in the Universal Joint and Axle Division of Bendix and, as an article in Table Tennis Topics would explain, he’d have contributed to our World War II efforts by working to develop “the front drive axle of the ‘Jeep’ and amphibian ‘Duck,’ and the hydraulic pump of the famous 5-inch duel purpose naval gun.”

By this 1947 time, too, he would have had the opportunity to pursue other interests than table tennis and of coarse…(being the husky six-footer that he was, with the appetite for life that he had)…eating (“steak smothered in onions, chilled tomato juice by the gallons, pink Texas grapefruit, toasted almond ice cream, freshly baked pumpernickel bread with Hungarian-style cottage cheese…”). A 1947 TTT interviewer described his considerable outside interests as follows: He enjoys working on various committees of the South Bend YMCA, is a  member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, a member of the St. Joseph Valley chapter of the Engineer’s Club, a member of the South Bend Motorcycle Club (and enjoys cross-country jaunts on his high-powered ‘Ariel’), plays tournament chess, is active in photography and model airplane work and plays a wicked game of bridge.

But it was the 1937-38 season when Varga first began making a South Bend life for himself and others, and under new President Hester the Indiana USTTA membership was again built up. By April 30, 1936 Indiana had 170 regular USTTA members and 202 so-called group members. Dr. F. Stanley Morest, the USTTA Organization Chair (and later for a very short time the USTTA President), had proposed an experiment involving Indian and mostly unorganized states whereby groups from schools, firms, and social organizations could become USTTA members by paying a $2 charter fee and, instead of a 50 cent membership fee, only a 10 cent one, with one (presumably well-thumbed) copy of TTT going to every five members. Thus, at season’s end, at the completion of its well published Membership Drive, the USTTA could say it had a record 4,000 members, though 1,000 of them were paying merely a token 10 cents for their membership. For the following 1938-39 season, the regular membership dues were doubled, from 50 cents to a $1; then, in the absence of any Membership total for ’38-39 to be seen later in TTT, the dues were reduced for ’39-40 season to 75 cents. The World War II decline in a never-very-strong USTTA membership was upon us.

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