Istvan Kovacs, an assistant professor of physical and health education at Slippery Rock University, conducted research with his club players that recently caught the attention of the international table tennis community.

SLIPPERY ROCK — When Istvan Kovacs was 11, he watched the Hungarian national table tennis team upset perennial powerhouse China in the world championships.

His appreciation of the sport only grew when his father set up a table for him and his friends to learn from the players they watched on television.

Forty years later, Kovacs is still fascinated with the sport.

Kovacs, a Slippery Rock University assistant professor of physical and health education, returned to his native Hungary last month as the only American presenter at the International Table Tennis Federation Sports Science Congress, which took place in Budapest in conjunction with the ITTF World Tennis Table Championships.

The congress was attended by more than 150 scholars, scientists and coaches seeking to advance the sport of table tennis through research in areas related to everything from exercise physiology and sports psychology to coaching techniques and game play strategies

His path home to Hungary took several twists. When younger, he competed as a triple jumper for the Hungarian national team. He then became an American citizen and joined the SRU faculty 15 years ago.

After starting club teams at SRU six years ago for students, faculty, staff and community members, Kovacs began conducting research with his club players that recently caught the attention of the international table tennis community. Thus the invite to the ITTFSSC.

“(Attendees) were very interested in my presentation because I'm from America and it included information they haven't seen before,” said Kovacs, one of more than 50 presenters at the event. “The conference was great because I could meet the top scientists in the sport of table tennis.”

Having practiced with his SRU club team players twice a week, Kovacs wanted to measure the skills of typical amateur players and how much they could improve.

“The first question I asked is, 'What is the spin rate and hitting speed of an amateur player?' because there had been no published research about that that I could find,” said Kovacs, who earned a doctorate in biomechanics from Eotvos University in Budapest. “Most scientists are focused on the top-level international players.”

Kovacs then wanted to find out how much a player could improve in an amateur club setting, without personal coaching or without dedicating a lot of time practicing a particular skill. In his players' case, that meant only two, 20-minute sessions per week for eight weeks.

“Table tennis is a highly skilled sport that requires a combination of hitting with spin, speed and accuracy,” Kovacs said.

“The spinning ball requires a lot of thinking by the opponent because the spin on the ball will affect the outcome on the player's paddle. The incoming ball has more topspin and rotation, and it's going to bound upward and can easily go long,” he said.

“If there's backward rotation, then it'll be hit downward toward the net. If the player can vary the amount of spin, that will cause major difficulties for returning the ball accurately because the opposing player always has to read how much spin is put on the ball that's coming toward them,” he noted.

Kovacs identified the forehand loop-drive, a commonly used table tennis shot using top spin, as a skill to analyze. He already had willing research participants.

The Table Tennis Club at SRU, along with the community club team, practice for two hours twice a week at Morrow Field House and have a combined 25 members, 13 of whom would participate in the study and provide Kovacs a sample of players of varying age and skill level.

Austin McClinton, a senior health and physical education major from Beaver Falls, and Catherine Rauenzahn, a 2018 graduate with a degree in health and physical education, were on board to help collect and analyze data.

McClinton had previously worked with Kovacs on research measuring upper body strength, and despite not being much of a table tennis player, he saw the opportunity to expand his range of research and enhance his candidacy for graduate school.

“This has broadened my horizon, showing that I'm not (a researcher in) just strength and conditioning,” McClinton said. “I can get into biomechanics and self-regulated learning and how to develop protocols. I was interested in using the cameras and the paddles to study the forehand loop and learn the complexities and precision of the game.”

Kovacs received a $5,000 Faculty-Student Research Grant from SRU to purchase equipment necessary to both deliver a consistent shot to a player and measure the speed and spin of the players' returned shot.

A robot called the Butterfly Amicus Advanced served balls with backspin and in each session a player had to successfully return five consecutive shots using a forehand loop. Researchers used a high-speed recorder to capture video of the returned shots at 480 frames per second.

The results have helped to inform the table tennis community and support the idea that people can take up the sport and improve quickly.