Never too old for Ping-Pong.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - He's hard of hearing and a man named Harding was in the White House when he was born.

Still, it's not recommended you mess with 84-year-old Harry Ehrmantraut when it comes to table tennis, because it's likely he'd kick the you-know-what out of you.

He might even teach Forrest Gump a thing or two.

Also known as Ping-Pong, this is Ehrmantraut's game. A game played by a group of men two or three times a week at the Willamalane Adult Activity Center.

The youngster among them on a recent Tuesday morning is Bob Jacobucci, 64.

"It keeps you young," Jacobucci says.

But how much younger does he want to be when the competition is in their 70s and 80s? Not that he can lick those guys.

"About 72 years off and on," says Ehrmantraut when asked how long he's been playing table tennis.

A Springfield resident and longtime instructor of the game at the University of Oregon, Ehrmantraut is one of the original members of the group that plays here. And he's now the senior member after the death two years ago of 94-year-old Warner Kirlin, who was also a world champion horseshoe pitcher and the oldest horseshoe player in Oregon, if not the oldest Ping-Pong player.

Good hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes are the keys to successful table tennis, says Ehrmantraut, a retired biophysicist.

"You don't have to be big, you have to be fast on your feet," he says.

Ehrmantraut, who puts a mean spin on the ball, regularly plays in tournaments in Portland and elsewhere on the West Coast.

He's been ranked among the top 15 players nationally for men 80 and older, according to USA Table Tennis in Colorado Springs.

His last rating was 1,114, according to the organization's Web site. The top players, of any age, in the nation rate somewhere around 2,500, and beginners usually rate about 200 to 300, Ehrmantraut says. It's much like a golf handicap, he says.

You have to play another ranked player to get rated, and it doesn't matter what gender or age, says Tom Mitchell, 71, of Eugene, another ranked senior.

"It's very embarrassing to get beat by a 12- or 13-year-old girl, believe me," says Mitchell, who was once matched against Beaverton's Whitney Ping (yes, that's her real name) in a tournament.

Ping, now a student at Stanford University and a member of the women's 2004 U.S. Olympic table tennis team, is currently the 17th-ranked female player in the nation, according to USATT rankings.

Seniors have been playing table tennis at the activity center for about 15 years, Ehrmantraut says. But it hasn't always been easy to find a permanent home.

"We played here for a while," he says of the building at the end of West C Street, "until we got displaced by the computer lab."

They moved over to the old Willamalane building on A Street for about six years before getting their spot back at the activity center last year.

Of course, you never know who's on the other side of the divider in the dining hall, where they play now. For a while, they had to share the space with a folk-dance group.

"The ball would shoot over and someone would pitch it back," Ehrmantraut says.

Hey, folk dancers need their exercise, too.