By Michael Liebermann
Carol Klenfner spotted the listing one morning in the newspaper.
PBS would be airing a documentary called “Ping Pong” that night. Klenfner — 69 years old and widowed and looking for something to “fill me up” — had played the game as a kid, smacking the ball around in the basement with her older brother.
So she flicked on the documentary that, she says, “changed my life.” In the film, a group of seniors traveled to the World Masters in China — the youngest was 80 years old, the oldest 100, many saddled with challenges like cancer and dementia.
“I found it so inspiring,” Klenfner, now 80, says. “Their desire to win. It just kept them going, and the fight for life and putting some kind of meaning into life.”
She knew she couldn’t play tennis anymore. But ping pong? That she could do.
The sport has given her “a new reason to live.” Her apartment wall hosts more than 50 medals, including a gold from the 2023 National Senior Games that preceded a trip to the World Masters, in Rome in 2024.
Klenfner always harbored a competitive streak. Growing up in Bayside, Queens, she played stickball, sidestepping out of the way for passing cars, good enough to be allowed sometimes to play with the boys, her brother’s friends.
Ping pong? She played a little. Klenfner says now she is “ping pong passionate” — that wasn’t so much the case back then, when the basement table served more as diversion than vocation. Her entire arsenal of shots consisted of backhands. But there was always a knack for it in there throughout her life.
On a cruise with her husband, three decades ago or more, the ship staged a ping pong tournament. One woman showed up with her own paddle in a case. Klenfner had never seen that before. Well, Klenfner beat her anyway.
The ping pong gene remained dormant, though, until the documentary triggered it. Klenfner and a friend found a place to play in the city. It was a new wave kind of place, called Spin, a club, a lounge, a bar — a TopGolf, a Bowlero. “The coolest ping pong club ever,” Klenfner says. The perfect gateway drug for a woman now belonging to a group chat called TT Addicts.
“I had a great time. I loved it. It was so much fun,” Klenfner says. “And I got to a point where I thought, ‘I’m having so much fun, but you know what? It would be even more fun if I could win once in a while.”
She sought out a coach and found a group, playing at Spin twice a week in addition to playing in the women’s league. Even though she was learning, one guy in the group was impressed. She moved well. He asked her to join up with him after his doubles partner dropped out.
They ended up at the New York State Senior Games. Carol was terrified. Dry mouth. Numb fingertips. Pounding heart.
But she played well. Well enough to get a medal in her division, qualifying her for the National Senior Games in Birmingham. That resulted in a ribbon, for fifth place.
Klenfner calls it exposure therapy. She was nervous then. But not anymore.
Table tennis is her main thing now. She still works in publicity and has a few clients. But she’ll play five days a week before a tournament, if not more, walking from her apartment to Times Square, boarding a subway there, riding to Spin, or booking a spot at PingPod to work with an expert coach, practice her serve or play with the robot.
PingPod, a 24/7, automated table tennis spot, has in some ways supplanted Spin for Klenfner. She goes there to practice the sport that has become way more than a hobby.
Table tennis has helped her age better. She sees people around her slowing down, and she sees it in herself, too, of course. This is what happens at this age. In the course of a 40-minute interview, she gets a text that somebody has passed. That’s just how it goes.
But Klenfner keeps moving. There’s a quote she loves by Matisse, the French artist: “I hope that however old we live to be, we die young.” She embodies those words. Never more so than by traveling this summer to Israel.
“Hey,” one of her friends said one day. “Carol, do you want to be on the Maccabi Masters team for table tennis?”
Klenfner has never been to Israel. She would never be going, she says, if not for the Games. All four of her grandparents came to America from Europe around the late 1800s, and cultural identity was very important to her family growing up. Being part of these Games?
“It’s an honor,” Klenfner says. “And I thought, well, if not now, when?”
She can’t wait. She’s not sure if she’ll contend for a medal. She’s not even sure what age group she’s competing in.
That’s not what it’s about. It’s about inspiring people, like the eight players from “Ping Pong.” And the documentary? She has not rewatched it.
“It’s just funny to me that when I saw the documentary, 80, to me, was like, Oh my god,” Klenfner says. “And now I’m on the brink of turning 81. And I don’t feel like it’s that old.”
She has not, in that way, looked back. She is looking forward. Toward inspiring new people, and toward Israel.
Michael Liebermann is a third-year student at the University of Virginia from Westfield, N.J. He is a senior writer and former sports editor at The Cavalier Daily, where he primarily covers men’s basketball, soccer and lacrosse. You can find his work here and follow him on X or Instagram.