Youth table tennis player has eyes on Olympics

Peter Li of North Laurel earns spot on 2007 U.S. Cadet Team

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette Peter Li, 13, of North Laurel practices his game Friday at the Maryland Table Tennis Center in Gaithersburg.

Recently named to the U.S. table tennis team for boys younger than 15, 13-year-old Peter Li already has corporate sponsorship and is being trained by two world-renowned coaches.

Peter, the son of Ming Li and Li Ping Hong, said he will try out for each of the next two summer Olympic games and expects to compete for a U.S. spot in the 2012 games.

A straight-A pupil at Hammond Middle School, Peter first picked up a paddle at age 6 and began playing competitively when he was 9. He became interested in table tennis — which is wildly popular in his parents’ native China — by watching his father play.

‘‘I liked the sport, and it seemed like a sport I’d do better in than most other sports,” said Peter, who is small in stature for his age.

Peter’s father runs drills with his son on the family’s basement table and supervises a training regimen that includes running, weights and push-ups.

But, dad, a well above-average player himself, can no longer keep up when the two play games.

‘‘I can’t handle him,” Li said. ‘‘He’s a little too advanced.”

Jack Huang, one of Peter’s two coaches at the Maryland Table Tennis Center in Gaithersburg, where Peter trains two to three days a week, said Peter is a disciplined player who would be able to add more power to his game in due course.

‘‘He is very quick and very consistent,” said Huang, who, like Peter’s other coach, Cheng Yinghua, is a former U.S. No. 1 player and former member of the Chinese national team. ‘‘I think maybe after one, two more years, he should have more power.”

For the past three summers, Peter has attended a training camp run by expert coaches in Fuzhou, China, near where his parents lived before immigrating to the United States 18 years ago.

Peter said playing in China improved his speed.

The native players are ‘‘really fast,” he said.

Last year, Peter participated in about 10 competitions, about half of them outside of Maryland. His most recent was the U.S. Nationals Dec. 13 through Dec. 16 in Las Vegas. There he earned one of four spots on the boys’ 2007 U.S. Cadet team, as the national team for players under 15 is known.

Peter’s next big competition is the Pan American Junior team trials Feb. 27-March 1 in San Diego.

E-mail Steve Earley atsearley@gazette.net.