Sho Hashizume, the co-ed team captain of the University of Pennsylvania’s Ping-Pong club, started playing table tennis at age 4. But for the first 10 years, he didn’t like it.

The senior finance major from New York City suspects the main reason is because it took him a very long time to improve his skills, despite practicing with a coach for two hours a day every weekend at table tennis clubs.

“In all the tournaments that I played when I was younger, I always lost to people who were lower in skill,” Hashizume says. 

But, when he joined the cross-country running team in high school, everything changed.

While he wasn’t a fast runner, he found the brutal daily training regimen of cross-country gave him more endurance, mental strength and understanding that hard work eventually yields dividends. The idea of pushing himself extended into other areas of his life, including table tennis. 

“Suddenly, my Ping-Pong performance improved significantly, and I finally started to enjoy being able to compete with people that I would have never had a chance of winning against before,” says Hashizume, who joined the Ping-Pong club team as a freshman at Penn. “Some things you never discover without enduring and continuing with for a long period of time.”

He says even though the process of working on one’s Ping Pong skills is endless, he now finds it enjoyable. It even helps him to relax.

“Being able to focus on each ball during practice has somewhat of a meditative quality that requires a high degree of concentration,” Hashizume says. 

He adds that diligence is the most important aspect of Ping-Pong or any other sport.

“There is a lack of time and a minimal margin of error, and making shots in games comes down to the number of times you have practiced that shot,” he says, which is why he leads the team in an intense Ping-Pong practice session for two hours, three times a week. “Hitting one ball doesn’t lead to much of an improvement, but hitting the same ball thousands of times leads to a tiny improvement in skill.”

Hashizume’s dedication to mastering the art of playing table tennis has really paid off. As the No. 1 player on the Ping-Pong club’s roster, he says that it comes with a certain degree of responsibility.

“You have to play against the best players from other schools, and that makes it more challenging,” says Hashizume. “However, the increased pressure and expectations makesplaying as captain much more exciting.”

Penn’s Ping-Pong team won the first leg of the Pennsylvania Division on Oct. 22 and they are confident that they’ll take the second leg of the division, which is scheduled for Jan. 21 at Penn State University. 

During that tournament, Hashizume will compete for the Pennsylvania division co-ed singles champion title, an honor that he brought home in 2014.

Future tournaments include the Mid-Atlantic Regionals, which will be held in North Carolina in February, and pits Ping-Pong players from Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia against each other.

Hashizume says that, once Penn’s Ping-Pong club clinches these two tournaments, they’ll qualify for the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association championships, a three-day tournament in April in Wisconsin.  

“Playing a competitive game is mentally taxing as strategy, reactions and consistency all come into play,” Hashizume says. “Both diligence and having to perform under pressure are both things that apply in school and in the work place.”

After his graduation in May, Hashizume will be working at McKinsey & Company in its Tokyo office. But, he’ll always make time to practice Ping-Pong.

“Since there are lots of tournaments held both in the United States and Japan, it will be nice to get to compete once in a while,” Hashizume says. “Playing Ping-Pong is great because you get to meet people you have never met before. It is certainly a tight-knit community that is open for anyone that is interested.”