October 3, 2013

MDTTC Newsletter

I'm the editor of the monthly Maryland Table Tennis Center Newsletter, cleverly titled the MDTTC News. Yesterday the October issue was emailed to MDTTC members and those on our mailing list. (If you want to be on the list, email me.) Here's the archive of past issues.

Each issue covers a number of topics. The key is to make it interesting, informative, and link it to the club's programs. The last item is key - there's little point in a newsletter that features interesting stuff but doesn't link to programs that the club is trying to create interest in. Below is the table of contents for this issue. (I'm especially looking forward to the new afterschool program where I get to switch from my table tennis hat to my tutoring hat. I can tutor in just about any school subject outside foreign language.) Each issue also has a feature picture at the top. This issue has a group picture from one of our summer camps.  

Does your club have a newsletter? Why or why not? It's a great way to promote the club and its programs!

  • NEW! Afterschool Program
  • Upcoming Butterfly MDTTC October Open (Oct. 26-27)
  • Fall Sales - Passo Butterfly track suits
  • North American Teams - Discount available till October 23rd ONLY
  • Adult Beginning Class
  • Ongoing Programs
    • Junior Classes
    • Group Sessions
    • Private Coaching
    • Leagues
  • Ernie Byles - Saved by Table Tennis
  • Rental Space for Corporate and Private Events
  • MDTTC Web and Facebook Pages
  • Tip of the Month: Real Tactics vs. Parroting Tactics

Arm Problems and Novel Sequel

Arm is hopefully getting better. As noted yesterday, I've had to cancel or get substitutes for all my private coaching sessions since Saturday, including three hours yesterday. I'm still doing group sessions (including one from 6-7PM tonight), and I did do one private session that was all multiball. I'll test out the arm tonight and see how it is. Either way I'm still resting it one more day on Friday, and I'm pretty sure I'll be fine by the weekend.

Meanwhile, having a few days off gave me a lot of time to plan out the sequel to my upcoming novel, "The Giant Face in the Sky," coming Nov. 15. I've now got a rough outline for the sequel, and pages of notes. The first novel was a humorous fantasy that satirized the U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1960s, with sorcerers instead of astronauts, and with main character Neil (Armstrong, though last name is never mentioned) a 13-year-old sorcerer's apprentice, with his sidekick Buzz (Aldrin), essentially a talking, floating meteor. The sequel (also starring Neil, who is now president of the United States and magically disguised as an adult) will satirize the civil rights movement and Vietnam. (It's not easy combining the professions of table tennis coach & writer and science fiction & fantasy writer!)

Table Tennis Training in Korea

Here's video (7:55) of a table tennis camp in Korea. There's no actual table tennis in the video - just physical training to develop the legs. Take a look and remember this is how you should start your day for now on!

Slow Motion Table Tennis

Here's a video (48 sec) showing some great TT play in slow motion. Can you name all four players? (Comment below!)

Ma Long's Slow Spinny Sidespins and Topspins

Here's a video (4:02) showcasing world #1 Ma Long's spinny loops.

KIPP Ping Pong Smackdown Fundraiser

Here's the article and photos. "We raised $625K to provide quality education to students from the Bay Area’s low-income communities." Was this the largest fundraiser in table tennis history?

Spam Applications

I've had an ongoing battle with spam since I opened this site. As time went on it got worse and worse. Originally I let people register automatically. A growing number of spam accounts were created that posted spam in the forum and as comments in the blog, and I spent a lot of time deleting them until it got way out of hand. Starting April 23 this year I had to approve all registrations. When people register they get a note asking that they use a real-sounding name (since most spam uses various types of randomly created jumbles of letters and numbers) and to put something in the bio section that mentions table tennis. This allows me to rapidly go through them and approve only those that sound human and mention table tennis. This morning I broke 5000 spam account applications in the 133 days since April 23 - 5011 as of this moment. That's about 38 per day I've had to handle, one at a time. (Oops, make that 5012, got another one!) Thanks spammers. They should be lined up and smacked with cement-filled ping-pong balls.

Government Shutdown Ping Pong

The talking heads of TV news have christened the government shutdown as ping pong. Don't believe it? Here are the results when you put "Shutdown" and "Ping Pong" into the Google search engine! I think CNN's Wolf Blitzer calls it this about once every five minutes.

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Send us your own coaching news!

i see 5 players in the awesome slow-mo video (love the music!)...in order of appearance, and what they are doing:

  1. lily zhang (contemplating serve, serving backhand)
  2. michael landers (preparing to receive, and looping backhand)
  3. ariel hsing (forehand counterlooping)
  4. erica wu (forehand smashing)
  5. barney reed (leaping forehand smashing)

Was that Lily at the start? Somehow I thought it was Ariel and Michael Landers the first few shots before they moved on to the other three.

In reply to by Larry Hodges

lol, definitely was lily zhang.  i guess being married to a chinese woman for more than 15 years has given me the talent of correctly discerning asian faces.  ;)