Inside the sunlit halls of Grace Christian Church on DeWitt Avenue in the East New York section Brooklyn, the rhythmic tap of ping-pong balls is a familiar sound. Behind each rally lies a legacy forged through decades. At the center of it all is Francis David “Sky” Llewellyn, a table tennis icon whose life journey reflects the heartbeat of the Caribbean diaspora and the vision for community upliftment, which now thrives under the banner of the Caribbean Basin Table Tennis Initiative.
For Llewellyn, table tennis is more than a sport. It’s a cultural conduit. His story begins as a curious child in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, standing on a bucket to peer over a door and watch his cousins play.
“They let me join, and that very day, I picked up a paddle and beat all of them,” he recalled with a laugh. “That’s when I knew this was my sport.”
Llewellyn’s natural talent, combined with mentorship from Corborn “Pappy Loose” Williams, a fellow Vincentian living in Trinidad and Tobago, shaped him into a regional champion. By age 13, Llewellyn had already claimed his first national title. By his twenties, he was helping St. Vincent dominate the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) team championships with an unmatched seven consecutive titles.
Immigrating to the United States in 1979, Llewellyn remained tethered to the table. But he grew acutely aware of a cultural gap between table tennis and Black communities.
“Too many young people think sports means only basketball, football, or baseball,” he said. “But table tennis is the king of racket sports.”
That conviction fueled the founding of the Caribbean Basin Table Tennis Initiative in 2000. With the recent opening of a dedicated club space inside the Christian Life Fellowship Center for Seventh-Day Adventists at 434 DeWitt Avenue, Llewellyn’s long-held dream has quietly taken root in a seemingly hidden table tennis oasis.
“Now it’s up to us to bring in the players and get the young people to fall in love with the sport,” he underscored. And Llewellyn leads by example.
Currently ranked 2105, he’s deep in preparation for the St. Vincent National Table Tennis Championship on August 16, putting in work alongside longtime training partner Eddie Veara, a fellow veteran of the table tennis community from Ecuador.
Despite having undergone multiple surgeries and surviving major health scares, including a stroke and blood clots, he still wields the paddle with the same zip and spin he developed in his youth.
“The training is intentional,” Llewellyn shared. “I know exactly how I want to move and what shots I want to ambulate…”
Another friend and fellow player is Chedee Geet, a table tennis veteran who’s been engaged in the sport for over 40 years. “Sky and I go back over 20 years. We’ve become very close — training partners for about five years now.” For Geet, returning to the sport after retirement has been about community as much as competition.
“This is one of the first clubs I know that is owned by Caribbean people,” Geet asserted.
Another longtime confidant and training partner, Colin Lemmersee, originally from Trinidad and Tobago, began playing 35 years ago and worked his way up to a 2,100 USA Table Tennis rating. What sets the Caribbean Basin Table Tennis Initiative club apart, Lemmersee emphasized, is not just the facilities, but the sense of mutual respect.
“Most of the people on my Facebook are table tennis players,” he said. “You might argue over points sometimes, relationships may take a break, but the love for table tennis always brings you back together.”