Waters, Giblette, participate and take home hardware in Table Tennis Tourney

The first rule of table tennis is not to call it "ping pong."

"That's because there is a difference between ping pong and table tennis," John Waters told the PCN.

Waters won the Division B silver medal in table tennis at the Big Sky Games in Billings Saturday, July 18. The event was held on the campus of Rocky Mountain College.

Waters made the trek to Billings with his father who watched and Thad Giblette and his son Palmer Giblette, who both played in the tournament.

Palmer Giblette also medaled in the event taking third in Division C.

The tournament started off in round robin format, where each player played multiple opponents. Their record throughout the round determined which division (A, B, or C) the players would play in during the tournament round. There were 25 people present at the tournament.

Waters only lost one game in the round, which was good enough for Division B. He lost to last year's reigning champion. Waters has only been playing table tennis for about a year and a half.

"It started just inside my friend's house," Waters said. "They had a table and I got interested and slowly got better and better at it."

Waters and the Giblette duo got so competitive that they eventually needed to move their games into the garage.

"I'm not interested in things easily and this is one of the few things I have been interested in, so I decided to pursue it," Waters said.

This wasn't Waters' first time playing. He had played ping pong in P.E. at Malta schools before, but it wasn't the same.

"You kind of just hit it off the side of the table not really understanding what you were doing," Waters said. "Ping pong is a game where you go to Wal-Mart and buy those cheap little paddles and they (the players) just kind of smack the ball back or forth as hard as you can."

He noted the game could also be called Hard Bat and ping pong was made to be a recreational activity, while table tennis is the actual sport.

"Ping pong is a copyrighted term for a company," Waters said.

Table tennis has a more complicated racket as well, that consists of a wood blade handle, sponge and a rubber outside.

The Big Sky Games marked Waters' third tournament in his