If you ask students at Palo Alto High School what their favorite sport is, you might hear basketball, football, baseball, soccer and other commonly played sports. However, there is an answer you might not expect to hear: Table Tennis.

Colin Hwang, a sophomore at Paly, is a whiz kid at a sport you don’t hear too much about competitively. Hwang is an extremely talented table tennis (or ping-pong as it is popularly called) player with many tournament wins. Although he only started about four years ago, he is already a national champion of the 1300 and under division.

Hwang was always interested in sports and played some early on. He played basketball for a few years, but it never really fit him. He finally found his sport about six years ago in a rec room. "I was playing in a rec room once, and got hooked," Hwang said. "I went onto the Internet and looked up table tennis clubs."

Two years later, Hwang played in his first match for the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club under coach Dennis Davis at a small tournament in Concord. He pulled out a win in his first ever competitive match against a player ranked around 700. He then lost his next two matches. By the end of the tournament, Hwang was at 511 points, which is a solid starting point. Talented players who have played for a while have around 2400 points.

The points/rankings system in table tennis is as follows: You start out playing your first match. If you win you are seeded a little lower than the number of points your opponent has. If you lose, you are seeded lower than that. When you play a match, if you beat a player with more points than you, you gain more, if you lose to someone lower than you, you lose points. The starting ranking for a player is usually in the mid hundreds. A high ranking is around 2400 and the number one player on USATT.org is at 2793.

About two years ago, Hwang was selected to train oversees in China for a three week "death training" camp as Hwang called it. In the mornings, the kids training at camp would begin their eight hours of training with warm-ups, stretching, and single ball training. The rigorous afternoon sessions consisted mainly of physical training and multi-ball training, in which around a thousand balls are launched at the trainee, which he/she has to return. During the nights, the trainees could relax, or they could go to surf class, where they got lessons on learning to surf. "It was worthwhile because my rating went up a lot after the camp," Hwang said, "I saw the best players in the world train and it was to be a part of that," Adding later.

Upon returning to America, Hwang felt his game was much improved. He had a very good year in 2001; a solid year in 2002, but 2003 was clearly his break-out year. Although he only played in three tournaments, he left his mark at all of them.

The first tournament of the year for him was The California Open 2003/Stiga N.A Tour. At the tournament, he only went two and four, but he gained 113 points in his efforts. The next two tournaments are where he really stepped it up. At the Concord Cup Open, he went 10-2, and gained another 157 points to put him at 1362. His most impressive showing was at one of the biggest stages was at one of the biggest stages, the 2003 USA TT National Championships. He won 20 matches, lost 3, won the tournament, and gained 309 points.

Hwang is currently at a points total of 1591 after a 2-3 showing at the Western Open on the 2004 Stiga N.A. Tour, and has a career record of 85-56 overall. When asked about his ambitions for the future, Hwang has a good outlook. "I’m having fun for now, and for as long as I can, and I plan to make a college club and try to promote playing as much as I can," Hwang said.