August 12, 2014

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday we started Week #9 of our ten weeks of summer camps. (I missed last week because I was running a camp in Virginia.) Turnout for some of our camps this summer was lower than normal, but no more - we have 41 players in the camp (40 under age 16), with perhaps our largest contingent ever in the 6-9 age group, about half. (This despite the fact that our top four juniors are all currently training in China - Nathan Hsu, Derek Nie, Roy Ke, and Crystal Wang.) It's also one of our most Asian groups, with only four non-Asian players in the camp. Since we put up 18 tables for training, that means two players on 16 tables and nine others doing multiball on two tables. I spent the whole day feeding multiball, and will be doing that all week, Mon-Fri, 10AM-6PM (with a two-hour lunch break). Raghu Nadmichettu was feeding balls on the other multiball table. 

Here's the camp photo we took yesterday morning. Amazingly, we had two more players join us that afternoon. That's me on the far right. Other coaches in the camp are Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Raghu Nadmichettu, Wang Qing Liang ("Leon") and Chen Bo Wen ("Bowen"). We're actually short-handed, as two of our coaches are currently in China - Chen Ruichao ("Alex") and Zeng Xun ("Jeffrey"). Both are coaching at the club where two of our juniors are training, Nathan and Derek, and should be back soon. 

Most of the emphasis was on forehand play on Day One. Today the emphasis will be on the backhand. (We adjust for advanced players, of course, who do more advanced drills, including many forehand-backhand drills.) As usual, it's amazing the different learning curves for different players. Some pick things up almost as fast as you teach it, others you almost have to hit them over the head to get things through to them. (That's an expression - no kids are hit over the head in the course of our camps!) 

As always, we finished the sessions with games. The more advanced ones played regular games. Others played "King of the Table," while others played the usual target practice games where I feed multiball and they knock over pyramids of cups or hit other objects. As usual, the biggest his is when I put my Gatorade bottle on the table and tell them it's really worm juice - and if they hit it, I have to drink it. They make me drink it. At the end of the day, from 5:30 to 6:00 PM, we did physical training. 

Narrow Defeats but Valuable Experience for North Americans

Here's the ITTF article on the USA and Canadian players preparing for the upcoming Youth Olympic Games. 

Interview with Jan-Ove Waldner

Here's the interview this past weekend from Table Tennis Daily. 

MDTTC Newsletter

The August issue of the Maryland Table Tennis Center Newsletter is out. Here's the archive of past issues.

Ovtcharov's backhand in the China Super League Final

Here's the video (24 sec, including slo-mo replay). 

Junior Training Video

Here's the video (1:42) set to music, apparently from the "Power Table Tennis Academy." Not sure where that is. 

100-Day Countdown to Change in the ITTF's Presidency

Former USATT President Sheri Pittman Cioroslan is doing an article every day during the last 100 days of Adham Sharara's ITTF presidency, counting downwards from 100. Previous ones are linked from the USATT News page, as well as in my past blogs. Eighty-one down, 19 to go!

  • Day 20: Didier Leroy Says It Takes “Real Passion” to Be a Competition Manager
  • Day 21: Cai Zhenhua Commits ATTU to Helping ITTF Achieve P5 Goal

Hyperkinetic Table Tennis Cartoon

Here's the cartoon by David Ziggy Greene. Any suggestions for a caption? (Cartoon comes from the end of this article.)

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