Spin City (2007 Millcreek Open)
October 22, 2007

Nancy Prose leans to reach the ball hitting it back to opponent Desmond Preston during the Millcreek Open Table Tennis Tournament at McDowell Intermediate School. Photo By: Lauren M. Anderson / Erie Times-News

Courtesy of Erie Times-News (By Kara Rhodes) The squeak of tennis shoes. The grunt of disappointment after a lost point. The sweat soaking through a T-shirt. This isn't your basement Ping-Pong game. This is table tennis.

And 118 players -- ages 9 through 81 -- were gathered at McDowell Intermediate High School this past weekend for the 2007 Millcreek Open Table Tennis Tournament hosted by Erie's Table Tennis Club.

Just a few players are from Erie. The rest are from cities scattered across the map -- Pittsburgh; Rochester, N.Y.; Cleveland; Buffalo; and Guelph, Ontario.

Among those in Erie from out of town is 20-year-old A.J. Carney, of Rochester, N.Y. He was the table tennis gold medal champion at the Junior Olympics when he was 10.

He still dabbles in table tennis -- he's got a mean spin -- and still has a respectable ranking in the sport.

But he really just drove from the State University of New York at Cortland to spend time with his father, who also plays table tennis.

It's baseball Carney is into now. The left-handed pitcher has several Major League scouts interested, his dad said.

"People in table tennis take the sport very seriously," Wayne Carney said. "But there's more money and a possible career in pitching."

Can you blame A.J. Carney for choosing baseball over table tennis?

After all, how many top table tennis players can you name?

Several stars of the game will be on hand today for the tougher competitions during the second day of the tournament. The top prize today is $750. In all, $3,000 in cash prizes, along with a TV and a DVD player, will be awarded.

Aaron and Nancy Prose, who drove five and a half hours from Portsmouth, Ohio, to the tournament, competed Saturday.

Aaron Prose, 27, a computer programmer, finds the sport fascinating.

"I'm into physics and math, and there's a lot of that in this game," he said. "It's all about angles and spin."

But trying to explain that to those who only know table tennis as, well, Ping-Pong, can be a challenge.

"Everyone has the same image of playing in the dark basement with a hard-back racket and a can of beer," Aaron Prose said. "But when they see it, they're really amazed by it. It's a sport."

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