It started as an accidental discovery. Croatian-American composer Nenad Bach was learning to cope with a Parkinson's Disease diagnosis when a friend invited him to go play ping-pong. Fatefully, he said yes. "I was diagnosed with Parkinson's 10 years ago," said Bach in 2020. "I'm a musician and I couldn't play the guitar anymore. I started playing ping pong two times a week; and six months later I was able to play the guitar again." In order to share his miraculous discovery, Bach founded Ping Pong Parkinson at the Westchester Table Tennis Center (WTTC) in Pleasantville, New York in 2017. The growing body of anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of table tennis in the treatment of Parkinson's symptoms eventually attracted scientific attention. In 2020, a major study at Japan's Fukuoka University corroborated what everyone at the WTTC already knew. Dr. Elizabeth Kera is a neuropsychologist who serves on Ping Pong Parkinson's advisory board. "We've seen other patients notice an improvement in their memory, in their processing speed, visual attention," reported Dr. Kera. "They ended up getting better and better at targeting the ball, hitting the ball but also strategizing how to hit the ball back." The success of Ping Pong Parkinson also drew the attention of the International Table Tennis Federation, which sponsored the 2019 ITTF World Table Tennis Championships. New York's Margie Alley won the inaugural Women's Singles title. "Table tennis has helped restore some of what the disease has tried to take away by providing physical, social and psychological benefits much similar to those that I experienced before my diagnosis," reports Alley. "I went to the first session and found it to be a lot of fun with the added benefit of being therapeutic for my mind and body. I also found the community of people at [Ping Pong Parkinson] to be very supportive." As Bach says, "This is also a support group. Just look at the smiles in the people, you can't buy that." In 2020, the smiles were put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic. In another groundbreaking move, Ping Pong Parkinson sponsored the first-ever Parkinson's Virtual Reality World Table Tennis Championships in April of this year. Now, Margie Alley is off to defend her title at the the 2021 ITTF Parkinson's World Table Tennis Championships, to be held over the next three days in Berlin. What started as an accidental discovery is now a worldwide phenomenon.

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