The prin­ci­pal of the Preysal Sec­ondary School has ap­pealed to those in au­thor­i­ty to be­gin util­is­ing the sport of ta­ble ten­nis to com­bat lifestyle dis­eases and help im­prove stu­dent grades.

Vas­dev Bob Roop­nar­ine has been play­ing the sport since he’s known him­self but on­ly took it se­ri­ous­ly while at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty.

“Ta­ble ten­nis is the hard­est sport to mas­ter be­cause any good bats­man; Bri­an Lara with any good bat on a good day could make a hun­dred, Diego Maradona with any fit­ting shoe or even bare­foot could score a penal­ty but the world cham­pi­on with my rack­et is in trou­ble be­cause the wider range of equip­ment; the dif­fer­ent spins that you could im­part on a ball is crazy its re­al­ly re­al­ly crazy.”

As faith would have it he be­came one of the best in the coun­try, win­ning many tour­na­ments. In his late years he put down his com­pet­i­tive rack­et to take up po­si­tions on the ad­min­is­tra­tive side of things. He has held the posts of sec­re­tary, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion. In 2004, he was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Caribbean Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion. Roop­nar­ine is al­so a cer­ti­fied ref­er­ee, um­pire, coach and gold badge com­pe­ti­tion man­ag­er by the In­ter­na­tion­al Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion.

It is from this sol­id back­ground he speaks when he tells of the ben­e­fits of ta­ble ten­nis and why the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport should take it se­ri­ous­ly.

For starters he said most ta­ble ten­nis play­ers are schol­ars be­cause the pow­er of con­cen­tra­tion is in­creased. “You must have the ac­cel­er­a­tion of a 100-me­tre sprint­er while think­ing like a chess play­er.”

In ad­di­tion, “The ben­e­fits of ta­ble ten­nis, apart from in­creased health ben­e­fits, fit­ness, men­tal alert­ness. It has been shown that ta­ble ten­nis play­ers don’t get Alzheimer’s, they don’t get Parkin­son dis­ease it’s a game who have to be think­ing like crazy.”

Roop­nar­ine ex­plained that, “Ta­ble ten­nis used to be the third best played sport in the coun­try un­til ca­ble came in.”

He said now peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, have got­ten lazy and rather be on­line in­stead of play­ing sports.

He said na­tion­al­ly as it per­tains to ta­ble ten­nis, “We re­al­ly in a bad place in terms of where we should be at this point.”

Nev­er­the­less, Roop­nar­ine hold the view that if the pow­ers that be as well as par­ents get in­volved the sport could be re­vi­talised and this would be to the ben­e­fit of the wider pop­u­la­tion.

“We need to change the think­ing of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and our Min­istry of Sport where per­sons who ad­vance them­selves in sport can be recog­nised for that and can be paid for that.”

He said in coun­tries, for ex­am­ple Ja­maica, coach­es get paid to go to school to teach ta­ble ten­nis.

He said the ul­ti­mate goal should be to cre­ate all round in­di­vid­u­als and sports is the mech­a­nism to do so.

“When you play sports you learn about fair play and it makes you a bet­ter hu­man be­ing and ta­ble ten­nis is one of the sport I would rec­om­mend to any­one be­cause con­tact sports for many peo­ple is a no no, par­ents don’t want chil­dren in con­tact sports, num­ber one, and num­ber two it can be played in­doors.”

For his part Roop­nar­ine is lead­ing by ex­am­ple, his two sons, Vi­mal and Arun, grav­i­tat­ed to­ward ta­ble ten­nis and the younger one, Arun is in the top three in the coun­try at this point. As it re­lates to his role as prin­ci­pal of the Preysal Sec­ondary School, he has im­ple­ment­ed a ta­ble ten­nis coach­ing pro­gramme.

“I want to en­cour­age any­one in­volved in sport, keep play­ing…play hard, study hard and work hard and there will be lots of ben­e­fits.”