Table Tennis The Wang Chen Table Tennis Club is a winner American Dream She came to the United States in the early 2000s to help her sister with a family business. She went to a Manhattan table tennis club to practice and met the owner, Jerry Wartski. Wartski is a real estate developer and an avid fan of the sport. He persuaded Chen to play seriously for the U.S. He became her sponsor, giving her a room in one of his apartment buildings so she could live near the club. Wartski is also a Holocaust survivor. “He told me just two days ago that he is the last
Wang Chen By Tara Ryazansky Photos Courtesy of Wang Chen
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alls hit the table in a fast rhythm at Wang Chen Table Tennis Club. They bounce back and forth between players so quickly that it’s hard to keep an eye on the ball. For me, that is, not for head coach and club owner Wang Chen. And not for her students, who are the ones paddling with swift ease under Chen’s guidance.
“We play the fast way, and very close to the table,” Chen says. “A lot of European players play far from the table and more like a game of tennis. A lot of Asian players play the fast way. We use speed to win the game.” Chen has earned a lot of wins throughout her long table tennis career. “When I turned 11, I became professional,” she says. “I was on the China National Team from 1987 to 1997. I won the 1997 World Championships.”
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survivor from his hometown in Poland,” Chen says. “He is 91.” Chen trained and worked as a coach in Wartski’s club. In 2008, she was one of only two American table tennis players to automatically qualify for the Olympics in Beijing. There she placed fifth in women’s singles, which Chen says is the highest placement in American table tennis history.
Table Tennis Boosters After that, Chen shifted her focus to promoting table tennis in the U.S. She and Wartski continued to collaborate. They
