As a world-renowned beer-pong champion and a world-renowned beer-drinking champion, I felt that the NIU Ping-Pong Club stood no fighting chance.

It was cooked. Shish kabobs. Beef jerky. Smoked ham on rye.

Three hours and four to five losses later, I was whipped, tired, sore and beat. My legs were on fire, and my poor brain felt like Jell-O.

It pretty much went downhill when club president Michael Nowicki laced up his specially made ping-pong shoes. His partner wore a blue T-shirt. In bright white letters, it read “XTREME Ping-Pong.”

They were serious, hardcore ping-pong paddlers. Almost serious enough to come dressed in uniforms.

“A lot of people say we should come out with jumpsuits, headbands and aviators,” Nowicki said.

To serve, Nowicki crunched to the ground, leapt to his tiptoes, tossed the ball, dropped it six inches and murdered the damn thing with a deadly topspin. His partner darted to his left and swung his paddle with a deadly arc, returning the serve.

Three feet away, I, the world champion of beer-pong, rubbed my eyes in tired disbelief. It was time for my ass kicking.

I lost game after game, sometimes only to watch my harrowing comebacks wither, die and stink. Most games stank really bad. Others stank kinda bad. Every game, however, stank. Each had its own stench.

Two particular stinkers involved a 60-year-old retired NIU sociology professor and a younger graduate student no taller than a mailbox.

Bob Suchner had trouble moving quickly across the table. He is older and slower; I am young, limber and quick like a shark. Now if we were to measure our abilities by age, he most likely would shake and brandish his paddle with the fear of God.

But 60-year-old Suchner brandished his paddle like a demon and played me like a fool. He sent me running back and forth, to and fro ,while he just stood there, immobile, smiling. He took three games in a row with a handicap of five points.

After the ass-whooping of a lifetime, Suchner revealed to me that he had been playing ping-pong for 52 years, since he was 8 years old.

“My grandmother used to run me around the table,” Suchner said.

Holy crap. Harry freaking Truman was president 52 years ago, and there was no color television, only ping-pong. Thanks, dude.

My next opponent in line was a girl. Again, I felt my physical prowess would overtake her smaller figure. I had brute strength on my side. And ignorance.

Taking apart my ego piece by piece, Anna Maltsev destroyed me. She could move much quicker and stretch much farther than I could; her nimble figure hid one mighty arm span. She, too, took all three games almost as smoothly as the older gentleman.

I spoke with her afterward. Turns out Maltsev was born in Ukraine, lived there until she was 11 and then immigrated with her parents to the United States because of the Chernobyl tragedy.

It also turns out that her mother is extremely athletic and taught ping-pong in Kiev, Ukraine. She also said something softly in her thick Ukrainian accent that really made sense:

“People say that ping-pong is like physical chess.”

If so, checkmate.