May 4, 2011

Table Tennis Nets

Not nets for the table, or even nets for robots, but nets for picking up balls! How did the world (or at least table tennis clubs with lots of training going on) operate before we had them for picking up balls? We use Ball Amigos from Butterfly (since MDTTC is sponsored by Butterfly). Paddle Palace sells Stiga Ball Catchers. Newgy sells Pong Pals, a tube for picking up balls, though I prefer nets. (JOOLA also has nets for picking up balls, but their shopping site is temporarily down for maintenance so I can't look it up.) Feel free to comment on other ball pickup devises - there are more. (Addendum: There's also the PingPongBuddy sold at Megaspin, as noted by PipProdigy below.) 

One of the funnier moments at MDTTC came about ten years ago when an actual butterfly flew into the club. So one of the kids spent the next ten minutes chasing it with a Butterfly net! (Technically a Butterfly Ball Amigo, but Butterfly net sounds funnier, and it was a Butterfly net being used as a butterfly net.) He never caught the butterfly, but he did chase it out the door.

Team USA Table Tennis News Item

Team USA Table Tennis put up a news item on the ITTF Coaching Seminar I ran in Maryland April 16-17, 23-24. The same article (by Jef Savage) should appear as a USATT News item soon. On their home page, in the blue field (to the right of the large picture box), click on "ITTF Coaching Course in Maryland," and you'll a picture of me teaching, classroom style! (I'm holding the book because we couldn't fit the whole page on the screen without making it too small for people to read, so I used the book for reference so I could see the whole page.)

Are you interested in an ITTF Coaching Seminar? Keep reading this blog; there are some future ones planned which I'll announce here! (Not necessarily by me - there are other high-level coaches who are planning on teaching them. I'll probably teach another one in Maryland next year.)

Table Tennis Tales & Techniques

Now for some crass commercialism. Want to buy a copy of my book, Table Tennis Tales & Techniques? Below are where you can buy copies! (I put the amazon link up, but why not support table tennis and buy from your favorite table tennis distributor?)

• Paddle Palace
• Butterfly
• JOOLA USA (site is down temporarily for maintenance)
• American Table Tennis
• Valor Table Tennis(newest dealer)
• Amazon

If you are looking for a copy of my book Table Tennis: Steps to Success (not to be confused with the book by Richard McAfee with the same title), you can still buy copies from Butterfly and Amazon, and there are currently four copies on sale on ebay. Plus there's an online version.

Two other table tennis books of mine are online:

• Instructor's Guide to Table Tennis (a shortened version of the original which I wrote for USA Table Tennis)
• Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook

Plus, of course, there's Pings and Pongs, a collection of my 30 best published science fiction & fantasy short stories! (There's one table tennis fantasy story, and table tennis is mentioned in several other stories.)

Tahl Leibovitz Videos

U.S. Paralympic Champion Tahl Leibovitz - who came within a game or so once of making the regular USA National Team - has put together a series of 21 instructional table tennis videos. There's a 15-second commercial at the start of each (wanna buy some State Farm car insurance?), then they go on to good stuff.

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