By WILL CONNORS
TORONTOâ€"Carter Campbell leaned over the stick-figure hockey players, loosening up his wrists and hopping from one foot to the other. The 14-year-old's cap was turned around. His iPod blared tunes from the classic-rock band Rush.
A young table hockey fan watches a game at a recent tournament in Toronto -- and keeps the time.
Across from him, 35-year-old, No. 1 ranked table hockey champ Mark Sokolski hunched over his own players. "I'm gonna stomp this kid," Mr. Sokolski said.
At stake was a slot in the elite eight of this year's Canadian Table Hockey Championships, the best-attended North American tournament that the game has seen in decades.
Across the U.S. and Canada, a resurgence of table hockey is under way, drawing younger players and women to a sport that has long been the domain of older men in their basements reliving a game that hasn't been popular since they were kids. From its heyday in the 1970s, table hockeyâ€"featuring stick figures on a flat board controlled by metal rods, wielding mini-sticks swatting at a small puckâ€"was nearly wiped out by videogames and the Internet.
But recently, table hockey's veteran ranks have been recruiting younger players, and many of the new breed are now facing off in the sport's growing tournament circuit. The under-30 set, meanwhile, is being drawn in by the sport's retro feelâ€"a throwback to the 1970sâ€"in much the way pinball machines and horseshoes stage comebacks from time to time.
Bars like the Monarch Tavern in Toronto are having table-hockey nights, where the mini-pucks fly. High schools in California and western Canada are holding tournaments for the first time ever.
"The sport died in the '80s," said Lou Marinoff, a philosophy professor at the City College of New York, and a Toronto Classic entrant. "Now it appears to be having a renaissance."
The Toronto eventâ€"held earlier this month in the arena of the Toronto Maple Leafs' minor-league affiliateâ€"is the second major annual event for the sport. The 120 participants were the most the tournament, which has been held since 1999, has ever attracted.
The tournament featured about 20 players younger than 30, including runner-up Dylan O'Hagan, 19, from Peterborough, Ontario. Several hundred observers wandered among the games, snacking on pizza and cotton candy. Some cheered the competitors on. Others walked in and, confused, asked what was going on. Several dozen dogs were also in the hall (it was bring your dog to the game day).
"I've never seen this many people at a tournament," said Dave Williams, 42, who drove up from Detroit with his older brother, Kevin. "It was dead for a long time."
Last month in Detroit, the other big tourney, the North American Championships, drew players from as far away as Denmark and Norway. A Russian contingent had visa problems and couldn't attend. Still, the event's 48 players broke its record for participation. Other tournaments in the U.S. and Canada have been held recently or are planned.
In Europe, the sport is taken more seriously. There are international rankings, prize purses of several thousand dollars and celebrity players.
The sport's renaissance here is partly due to a dedicated fan base of middle-aged men who played the game in their youth and are now trying to recruit and train the next generation of players. They are emphasizing the sport's human touch over videogames and smartphone apps.
Young players are looking for "real-life camaraderie," said Mr. Sokolski, a grade-school teacher from Petawawa, Ontario, and the president of the Ontario Table Hockey Association. "In videogames, there is no humanity."
The young Mr. O'Hagan, who won the tournament last year and has been playing since he was 14, says he likes the competitive nature of the activityâ€"and the quirks of a sport that is still played mostly in bars and basements. When he won the Toronto tournament last year, he took away a year's supply of free beer from one of the tournament's sponsors, a local brewery. He won the event the day after turning 19, the legal drinking age in Ontario.
"Why would I stop playing when I've gotten good, and when I win free beer?" he said.
His father celebrated with his son by cracking open a few beers.
Mr. Campbell, the 14-year-old, started playing after Mr. Sokolski, his teacher at the time, introduced the game to his class in Petawawa five years ago. Soon he was beating all the kids his age, and most adults in town, too, at school and in local tournaments.
"I'm clearly not that athletic," Mr. Campbell said, displaying his scrawny right arm. "This is a sport that I can play and I'm actually good at."
Mr. Campbell is the "Sidney Crosby of table hockey," a reference to the young Pittsburgh Penguins star, according to longtime player and table hockey legend Sid Kloosterman. Mr. Kloosterman has won a number of tournaments throughout Canada and makes his own table hockey sets.
At the tournament in Toronto, Mr. Campbell survived the first rounds but ended up losing to his former teacher, Mr. Sokolski, 5-3 and 5-1.
All the new tournaments are also breaking the ice in the sport's traditional gender divide. Sue Elias, who described herself as "over 40 years old," from Oakville, Ontario, won the first ever women's division tournament at the Toronto tournament. She beat Shirley Aguinaldo 4-2.
There were 10 women players at the tournament. The most women who had taken part in any tournament before that, as far as anyone could remember, was two.
Mrs. Elias says that sometimes she runs into male players who don't like playing with, and especially don't like losing to, female players. "One guy started to bleed during our game, he was trying to beat me so badly," Mrs. Elias says, recalling a previous tournament. "But I won."
There was also blood on the boards at the recent Toronto Classic. Eugene Kurz, 41, from Toronto, cut his finger while playing, pinching it as he pushed one of his metal control rods.
"There was blood all over the table," Mr. Kurz said. "Luckily they had bandages."
Write to Will Connors at will.connors@wsj.com
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