The Yellowknife Table Tennis Club is now open for business.
“We were just founded a few weeks ago,” said Roland Laufer, the club’s president.
Laufer, who has been playing table tennis for more than 20 years, said has big plans for the club.
“One is to have at least a two or three-day tournament, which Sport North and Table Tennis North also do, but we want to gather people from Dettah or Behchoko to organize a tournament for ages one to 99,” said Laufer.
A second idea is to create an additional support fund, which will enable them to sponsor three athletes from the city.
“For example, one athlete between the ages of zero to four, one between four and 18, and then one athlete over the age of 35,” he said.
While those plans are still yet to be realized, the club does have an event that has already started training. Members are going to William McDonald School every Monday, Thursday, and Sunday for practice.
The practice this Monday drew around 10 players.
Though Table Tennis North has been the driving force behind plenty of events, Laufer still saw the need to start a club specifically for Yellowknife.
“Table Tennis North has already organized so many things in Fort Providence and Hay River,” he said. “Yellowknife is a big city, but we didn’t have a club of our own. Consider the Arctic Winter Games — we had only two athletes from Yellowknife, but five from Fort Providence.”
Despite some initial hurdles with facility rentals and registration, he said the club has seen “remarkable” growth in membership. In the first week, the club had seven people registered as members and as of last Monday, more than three dozen are now on board.
Darren Woodland, one of the board members of the club, said that the idea to start a club really became concrete during the tournament that happened earlier this year.
Woodland said his interest in table tennis started when he was in high school.
“I consider myself an enthusiast,” he said. “It’s not just out of the goodness of my heart — I want a club to exist because I wanted to play and have ping-pong become a really interesting sport here.”