Paddlehands Pt. III
A chronicle of the 2007 BHS Student-Teacher Table Tennis Championship.
Read Paddlehands Pt. I about the origins of my rivalry with the greatest ping-pong player in my city’s history. Part II chronicles our early encounters leading up to the final tournament of our high school lives.
The walk home from school was miserable. No matter how hard we tried, Mickey, Jeremy, and I couldn’t fathom what Ms. DeMaria had done. Partnering with Eddie Finck was a violation. Of what? We couldn’t be sure. But the purity of the sport she’d taught us to love was a fiction. Ping-pong was not about friendly competition or the coming together of different cultures and worldviews. We had been naive to believe it was anything other than what Finck understood it to be: a fight to the death, the only objective being that it be your opponent’s blood, not yours, spilling onto the polished hardwood by day’s end.
“How could she partner with him?” Mickey asked once we’d made it to his mom’s kitchen. He pulled a 12-pack of ice-cold Snapple from the fridge and set it on the table. “Finck’s the best player in the club. It’s not right.”
Jeremy cracked open a bottle and pondered. “We could submit a formal complaint to the school board for…violation of the rules of fair play,” he suggested. The only problem was that we weren’t sure there were any rules of fair play. This may have been the most important tournament of our teenage lives, but in the grand scheme of things, would anybody outside the ice rink gymnasium care about a Student-Teacher Table Tennis Championship?
“Look,” I said, cracking open a peach tea. “We all picked our partners strategically, right? And we have three weeks to prepare…”
“And we don’t even know how good Ms. DeMaria really is!” Mickey interrupted. “She could’ve just felt bad he didn’t have a partner.”
“Or,” Jeremy said, cautiously measuring his words, “Finck could’ve concocted a ploy to have Ms. DeMaria believe he didn’t have a partner, thus evoking her sympathy and securing her alliance for the day of battle.” We pondered before taking a pathetic swig of our beverages. His suggestion made the most sense based on what we knew about our nemesis. But the truth didn’t help any. We were still circling the toilet bowl of dejection.
“Guys,” Mickey said, breaking the bitter silence. “They’re only one team. And there are three of us. One of us will surely get a crack at Finck.”
He was right. It may have been liquid courage welling inside us. But at that moment, we knew that even if one of us stumbled in pursuit of the Promised Land, the man at our side would surely carry the flag through the trenches toward victory. Hope remained as long as we pressed on together like brothers.
On Monday morning, in between classes, we informed our partners about the turn of events. Neither Mr. H, who grew up under Soviet communism in Ukraine, nor Mr. Bryngeirsson, who grew up on a frozen rock in the North Atlantic, were troubled by the news that Ms. DeMaria had joined the competition. To them, Finck was just a kid, like the rest of us, and she was a trusted colleague and friend; her intentions, they insisted, were pure.
Mr. Broderick, however, knew something our partners did not. He had started his tenure as Bayonne High School’s head tennis coach in the 1960s. Ms. DeMaria, a student at that time, was a star on the hard courts—“majestic, had one of the best backhands I’ve ever seen,” he told Jeremy. She’d won two girls' state tennis championships, graduated, and reappeared years later as a teacher, specifically requesting the role of ping-pong club advisor.
“Based on the information I gathered,” Jeremy said at this locker before club started that afternoon, “probability suggests we’re going to get our butts kicked.”
When we walked into the gym, Ms. DeMaria acted as if nothing were amiss. Like always, the clock struck 3 p.m., signaling the start of play. But before the crowds dispersed, she blew her whistle and called everyone to attention.
“From now until the tournament, Mondays and Wednesdays will proceed as regular club days,” she announced. “On Fridays, we switch to doubles player. Your partners are invited to join, if they wish. But save any attitude for the competition. Capiche?”
We nodded, and she continued. In total, 16 teams had signed up, more than she expected. So Ms. DeMaria and her deputy, Neil Tobayan, the club president, decided to hold the competition over two days instead of one. The first, second, and quarterfinal rounds would be played on Monday, April 23, with the semifinals and final occurring two days later.
Teams needed to win two of three games to 11 points to advance. Losers could either leave the gym or spectate, but they could no longer participate, even if a player was forced out due to illness or injury. The only occasion in which selecting a new partner would be permitted would be between Monday’s quarterfinals and Wednesday’s semis. And even then, the substitute player could not have featured in the tournament yet.
As Ms. DeMaria spoke, Finck leaned against the wall behind her, taking loud sips from a can of Sunkist procured by one of his minions. His leather jacket was thrown over one shoulder, his teeth glimmering behind a smile wider than the eastern seaboard. When our mentor blew her whistle to start play, Finck didn’t budge. “Hey, Grease Lightning,” she said. “Get going.” Our enemy scrambled to his usual table at the back, and the sound of plastic balls quickly flooded the room.
That Friday, I showed up to school early to meet with Mr. Bryngeirsson. He was at his desk, reading a book about Arctic seafaring and snacking on salted fish jerky. My partner asked about my objectives for the tournament, and I tried lying, but his glacial gaze slid through me like a Viking spear piercing its way to the awful truth.
I had deceived my closest friends.
Like Finck, I, too, understood the essence of ping-pong. It was not a sport of fun and friendship. It was every man, woman, and child for themselves. To have my shot at glory, Mickey and Jeremy needed to lose, either by my hand or Finck’s. I loved them dearly, and I hated to admit it; I still hate to admit it years later. But it was my turn to be king.
“Winning will not be easy,” Mr. Bryngeirsson said. “In Iceland, we have a saying, ‘Þrátt fyrir vilja veiðimannsins, verður hvalurinn ekki auðveldlega fangaður.’ Despite the fisherman’s desire, the whale is not easily captured.”
He took a large bite of dried cod and then placed the empty plastic bag on the desk. “If we want to be victorious, we must follow the training regimen my ancestors have passed down for generations in Hafnarfjörður,” he said, pulling out a weathered notepad and inviting me to look inside. What I read terrified me.
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, I met Mr. Bryngeirsson on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays before school. It was springtime in Bayonne, and the streets were alive with joy and laughter. Neighbors smiled as they walked their dogs. Roses blossomed, and rays of gorgeous morning light shone through the trees. My partner, however, was not happy. “These are some of the worst conditions for creating ping-pong champions!” he clamored, shaking his head in disgust. To combat any pleasure I might’ve mustered inside his basement, he switched the A/C to 37 degrees and set up large fans to blast cold air directly into my face. “Ah, just like home,” he said, rubbing an ice cube across his forehead.
Under Mr. Bryngeirsson’s wing, I ran through drills too terrifying to recount. I practiced every variation of forehand and backhand, drive and push, slice and smash, in every game-like scenario he could concoct. If it takes 10,000 hours to make an expert of any man, we had only 100, and yet I emerged a chiseled ping-pong machine ready to take on the world.
On the tournament's first day, Ms. DeMaria taped the bracket to the far wall, where a group of competitors huddled in anticipation. Jeremy parted the crowd, and I squeezed in behind him to learn who we’d each face in the first round. Since she was competing, our mentor had designated Tobayan to build the bracket. She gave him the floor, and he announced a twist no one had expected: after each round, the winning pairs’ names would be tossed into a ball cap and pulled randomly to determine the subsequent match-ups. There was no way of foreknowing which side of the bracket Finck would end up on, which offered relief to no one. The monster could’ve been hovering inside any of our closets, waiting to devour us.
In Jeremy’s first round match-up, he and Mr. Broderick faced off against a Russian friend who had entered his team as “Daniel” and “Sautkin,” believing that to achieve the nirvana state of “Beast mode, 25/8,”—a phrase he often belted into the air after winning points in singles play—he could not share the table with a partner. His plan backfired, and he was dispatched easily, 11-2, 11-1. In the second round, the pair squared up with Tri Nguyen, the Polish Club president, and Mr. Szyposzynski, the Polish Club advisor who had spurned Jeremy’s invitation to join him in a mutiny against the prez. Jeremy was relentless, emerging victorious in a dogfight, 11-7, 6-11, 11-5. Afterward, he called the crowd to silence and declared himself the CPP—Chief Polish Person—of Bayonne High School, a title he continues to display prominently on his LinkedIn profile.
Mickey and Mr. H also eased into the quarterfinals after a dominant first-round win against a team so unremarkable none of us texting over WhatsApp for the past week can remember who they were. In the second, they defeated one of Finck’s minions, Chris Schubert, and Mr. DeJesus, the 90-year-old Filipino shop teacher, 8-11, 13-11, 11-4.
For my part, the ferocious training I’d undergone with Mr. Bryngeirrson was paying dividends. We wiped the floor with Mike Valentino, a young guido and the only competitor in the tournament with visible muscles, and his partner Mr. Wilbeck, an adult guido and substitute gym teacher, 11-3, 11-4.
Our second-round matchup pitted us against the only man who had taken a game off Finck all school year: Charlie Cao, the Shanghainese American who, during a trip to New York to see a play with our honors English class, told me that for years his father sobbed alone in the living room at night, lamenting that his son could not train in the elite ping-pong schools of his motherland.
Cao was dashing: tall, lean, capable of putting such deceptive spin on the ball that you’d sometimes make contact just to see your return fly 10 feet to the right and smack the player at the next table in the forehead (sorry about that, Fawad). But Cao had a fatal flaw: he’d chosen a partner with his heart and not his head. Just as Jeremy, Mickey, and I had developed crushes on Ms. Z for her love of words, Cao was duped by Ms. Palmer’s love of mathematical formulas. The Great Wall fell, 11-7, 9-11, 17-15, and Mr. Bryngeirsson and I were through to the quarters.
By that point, Finck and Ms. DeMaria had been waiting over an hour to learn who they’d smash up after winning their early fixtures, 11-0, 11-0. The short straw fell to Mickey and Mr. H. “You can do this,” I said, slapping him on the back with my paddle as he stepped to the table confidently. “Take him out.” He was unflappable, mouthing words of intimidation at Finck, who snarled in return. The only butterflies in the room were inside my stomach.
The good guys tapped paddles with their adversaries, and the battle ensued. Mickey had plotted with Mr. H to hit every ball to Ms. DeMaria’s side, minimizing the odds of Finck sending an unstoppable return in their direction. In the first game, Finck barely touched a ball. Mickey and Mr. H won 11-9. Their clever strategy for squeaking their way to victory was working. But then Finck pulled Ms. DeMaria aside, whispering something into her ear.
On the next serve, they rotated places. But not just once. Every time the ball was hit, they swapped positions at hypersonic speeds, like a coin that wouldn’t stop spinning. Heads or tails? You were never sure. Their movement made them unplayable. They won the second game 13-11 and, despite my friend’s best efforts, the third 11-9.
With his head held high in defeat, Mickey came to where Jeremy and I were standing: “Did you see it?” he said quietly. We had no idea what he meant, so we simply responded, “Yeah, of course,” and reassured him that he’d done his best and should be proud of his valiant effort. “You came so close,” I said. “You were incredible, man.” But neither close nor incredible has ever been enough against Paddlehands.
In their quarterfinal, Jeremy and Mr. Broderick took on Kerolos Abidir, whom we referred to as “Shiny Pants” because his pants were made of some North African material that made them impossibly shiny, and Mr. Awad, the assistant wrestling coach. The table was slicker than usual after Shiny Pants had reapplied hair spray to his tight, dark curls in the bathroom before play started. The spin from the Egy pair was hard to read, and they took the first game 11-3. But the momentum swung Jeremy’s way in the second. Mr. Broderick, bouncing elegantly on the balls of his feet like Roger Federer at Flushing Meadows, was the key to victory. Summoning his septuagenarian wisdom, he wore down the younger, stronger men, and the glisten in Shiny Pants’ curls dulled with the ascendancy of Jeremy’s own Coif of Life. My friend and his partner took the second game, 21-19, and the third, 11-5.
Galvanized by Mickey’s defeat and Jeremy’s victory, Mr. Bryngeirsson and I made quick work of our anonymous quarterfinal opponents, 11-2, 11-5, to solidify our place in Wednesday’s semifinals. The last spot in the dance went to Joseph Jimenez, or “Froseph,” as we called him due to his superb afro, and Mr. Collins, the head wrestling coach.
The Final Four was set, and the spectators headed for the doors.
“The match-ups for the semifinals will be announced promptly at 3 p.m. Wednesday,” Tobayan bellowed from the center of the room as we packed our paddles.
Only two games remained. That night, I was so nervous that I couldn’t fall asleep. So I got on my knees and begged God that Jeremy and I would not have to fall on each other’s swords, gifting Paddlehands an easy path to victory. Then, still unable to fall asleep, I selfishly asked for one more thing: if He were to grant us diverging paths to the final, I said, let my best friend, and not I, be the first to face Finck on the battlefield.
On Wednesday, my prayer was answered. Tobayan drew me and Mr. Bryngeirsson against Froseph and Mr. Collins; Jeremy and Mr. Broderick were drawn against Finck and…Finck.
You read that correctly: Ms. DeMaria was out!
God works in mysterious ways. I thought that then and still believe it today, 17 years later and 700 miles away. And yet, this act of supernatural providence was no cause for celebration. The exertion two days earlier had agitated Ms. DeMaria’s carpal tunnel (the reason she had swapped the racquet for the paddle in the first place). Because she’d left him with only hours to find a suitable replacement, she granted Finck an exemption. The rules were amended to include the last-minute addition of Finck’s older brother, Robert, and the tournament was renamed the Bayonne High School Student-Teacher/Alumni Table Tennis Championship.
The shock reverberated through the crowd. But we were all just kids then; what power did we have to change things? Jeremy and Mr. Broderick had strategized for a different opponent than the one they met at the tabletop and could not make adequate adjustments in time. Even the fatal flaw Mickey had uncovered in Paddlehands’ style—his tendency to flinch when the ball was sent deep and directly toward him—was not enough to aid the future valedictorian. The Finck who’d trained our Finck into a force of destruction knew everything there was to know about the paddle. Their only difference was that he played left-handed while ours played with his right. He was a mirror image of the familiar monster, sharing the same deadly power and instinct. Jeremy and Mr. Broderick had no chance, falling in straight sets, 11-5, 11-6.
There is something about the sight of a fallen brother that throws every petty plan or vision of glory out the window. Vengeance becomes the only target. It’s ironic, I know; I would’ve sacrificed anyone—I would’ve had to sacrifice anyone—to meet my adversary in the final. But the selfish act was transformed. I had to do right by Mickey and Jeremy.
Mr. Bryngeirsson and I comfortably overcame Froseph and Mr. Collins, 11-9, 11-9. In victory, my partner betrayed no emotion, and neither did I. The dream scenario was within reach.
“Everyone gather around,” Ms. DeMaria called out before the culminating battle. The room was packed with spectators. The tension was as thick as the Axe body spray floating in the air, waiting to be sliced. The Bayonne Community News had sent a reporter to cover the match. But when he approached to ask the indomitable Finck a question before pulling the paddle from his leather holster, he gnashed his teeth in anger, and the man fled, hiding behind Shiny Pants, where he was safest.
Ms. DeMaria brought the four of us together like a pair of boxers in a main event at Madison Square Garden. “Alright, I want everyone to keep their paddles to themselves,” she said. “No roughhousing, no horseplay, no nonsense.” She rubbed her injured wrist as she spoke, and for the first time, I felt sympathy for her. Ms. DeMaria was not a monster to be blamed for the mayhem that ensued. She hadn’t enabled the beast. She simply saw the man behind the mask, the little boy within the gladiator, and did as any loving teaching would. Nevertheless, what was done was done.
“Are you ready?” she asked, pointing from Finck to Finck. The pair nodded. “Are you ready?” she pointed to Mr. Byngeirsson and me. We also nodded. “Touch paddles and go to your side of the table. We’ll commence in one minute.”
As I took my place, Mr. Bryngeirsson pulled a handful of dried meat from his pocket and handed it to me. “This is Hákarl,” he said. “Fermented grey shark.” It smelled worse than the body spray. “In Iceland, we say, ‘Það sem ekkert eitur og veldur ekki andláti þínu gefur þér afl til að slá niður óvininn.’ What doesn’t poison you or cause instant death provides the strength required to slaughter the enemy. Do you understand?”
“No, Mr. Bryngeirsson, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Alright, let’s go,” Mr. DeMaria beckoned, and the crowd rose and cheered. My best friends roared, knowing that I was the last chance for our trio to be remembered in the annals of BHS ping-pong history. The Fincks swayed, flat-footed, ready to draw power from the ground and through their paddles, which glistened with cubic zirconia, to vanquish their pitiful foes and claim the crown.
“Eat it quickly!” Mr. Bryngeirsson shouted. I put the rancid shark meat in my mouth, fought back the urge to vomit, and swallowed hard. My head spun in a hallucinogenic daze. My ears throbbed. My vision blurred, then narrowed. Suddenly, everything in front of me shifted into razor-sharp focus. The clamor of the crowd and my friends deadened. I looked to Mr. Bryngeirsson, who was mouthing words I couldn’t decipher.
Grípðu hvalinn. Grípðu hvalinn. Grípðu hvalinn.
A voice inside my head interpreted the heavenly tongue. “Catch the whale,” he’d said. “Catch the whale!”
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