It’s all about organising: How two Ultimate Table Tennis players are balancing career and motherhood

It’s not uncommon to see women rejoin work after having children. But sportswomen returning back to the competitive circuit after becoming mothers still catches some people off-guard.

It seems as though the theme of sportswomen returning to the field of play has become more recurrent in recent times. However, the idea in itself is not new, with several women athletes managing to balance their career and motherhood with aplomb, across the history of myriad sports.

Table tennis, too, then has its share of working mothers, who have prioritised their careers and their family lives without compromising one for the other. During the ongoing Ultimate Table Tennis, The Field got an opportunity to speak with two such working mothers and get an insight into the positives and the challenges of their lives’ choices.

Working mothers with a difference

Austria’s Liu Jia and Portugal’s Fu Yu are more than just teammates for the DHFL Maharashtra United. Both have a six-year-old daughter each, with Liu’s child even accompanying her to India this past fortnight.

“It’s very hard, but we chose this,” said the 35-year-old Liu. “We know we have to play good and win matches,” she added, also speaking for her relatively quieter teammate Fu as well. “I think we organise our life very perfectly. We don’t practice much, but when we do practice, we do good quality practice [by optimising our sessions].”

Liu and Fu also pointed out that they have the advantage of being based out European countries, which helps immensely when it comes to arranging their schedules and garnering help to take care of their children.

This, despite each having to play over 10 tournaments in a single season, across all platforms in the sport – from the leagues to the European Championships, and even in the World Tour events.

The 37th-ranked Fu pointed out, “Because I [live] in Portugual, I don’t face any problems as my family and friends are around. The schedule is that there is a tournament all week around. So, when a tournament ends, I come back home [to be with my daughter].”

Echoing her words, Liu then supplemented, “[I] have friends, [I] have neighbours and sometimes when I have to practice, my daughter is waiting for me in the hall. She can play and she has everything in the table tennis world. Everybody is like family and they play with her.”

The duality of career and motherhood

Aside of this facet, there is also a bigger rationale at play for more number of paddlers deciding to momentarily pause their careers for motherhood instead of retiring from the sport altogether. For, unlike other sports which require athletes to invest a lot physically, strategies of play in table tennis are plotted and played out mentally.

Extending this line of thought, the 38-year-old Fu added that since paddlers interested in having a professional career generally began their formal training from as early as the ages of five to six, many of them didn’t want to miss out on having a family because of their lengthy career commitments.

Fu’s next words were then definitive as she stated, “[Us players] have an insurance with our career. We have a guarantee in life about having a family as well. [So], we balance half and half [our family and career].”