Winning is Everything
Winning is everything. Maybe that sounds egocentric, but is wanting your team to be able to celebrate a victory really all that selfish? And besides, after all the work you’ve put into practicing or training for something that means everything to you, wouldn’t you be frustrated if you lost and went home with nothing to show for all that effort? Every extracurricular—piano, taekwondo, volleyball, fencing—was tainted by the idea that match or competition I didn’t win was not just a loss but a failure, and this bitterness would plague me until I lost to Thomas.
When I first joined a table tennis club in eighth grade, my coach put me against a younger but far more experienced player named Thomas. He had a condescending attitude about him at the time, probably because he was annoyed at having to play against someone he considered unworthy of his time or respect (understandable given my skill at the time). As expected, he destroyed me, and the humiliation of getting clobbered by some little kid several years younger than me sparked a rivalry. I would challenge him again and again until I could beat him and claim my win.
Over the years, I slowly closed the skill gap between me and Thomas but could never really surpass him, not until I saw a professional Swedish table tennis player named Truls Möregårdh. His unorthodox playstyle and tricks—chop blocks, fanning backhands, flat hits, that flick—had me on the edge of my seat because I couldn’t tell what he was going to do next. It was like I had been living my whole life seeing nothing but pictures on a wall and then suddenly seeing animation bring these still images to life. Truls’s creative style isn’t the way table tennis is normally played, but it’s a way that only Truls could play.
With a whole new dimension opened up to me, I adapted some of Truls’s moves for my own use to find something that, while weird to others, felt natural to me. I carefully developed two of my favorites: the chop block—a defensive move that puts a variable amount under- and side-spin on the ball, as though I’ve chopped the ball in two to force the opponent to guess where the ball will be—and the hook—like using your arm to sweep someone off their feet, this move forces opponents to leap for the ball as it curves out of their reach. Armed with these new weapons, I was finally able to win against Thomas. I thought the exhilaration of that moment was from winning, but looking back now I realize what I was actually celebrating was seeing my personal playstyle validated.
Truls isn’t the #1 table tennis player. He isn’t even in the Top 3 (well he was at one point, but now he’s #6). If I cared about winning so much, then why wouldn’t I cheer for the very, very best? Or if not the very best, then at least the best player representing my home country Lin Yun-Ju (林昀儒) a.k.a. The Silent Assassin (that’s actually his nickname because he’s an unusually quiet player)? Because for the players who care about winning more than anything, the straightest path to victory is just about maximizing efficiency. I thought that was me, too, but what drew me to Truls more than anyone else was his ability to express himself in that sport, as I would learn to do, too.
Jensen Tsai is a junior at Kangchiao International. For Jensen, anime isn’t just a casual distraction; it’s what inspires him to tackle new challenges, from Haikyu!! Leading him to his school’s volleyball team to Blue Lock motivating him to try soccer to Kuroko no Basket convincing him to give basketball another chance (shortly before he broke his finger while playing and gave up the sport for good), to even The Quintessential Quintuplets allowing him to find his precious waifu Miku.
Jensen plans to study psychology in college so that instead of just offering mere sympathies when his trouble friends seek him out, he can learn how to genuinely help them and others get through tough times.