December 4, 2014

USATT Election

USATT members on Wednesday received a mass email from my opponent in the election, the incumbent Jim McQueen. I don't know how he received access to the USATT email database for this mailing, but since he had access, USATT agreed it was only fair that I have access as well. They will send out my own email today at 1PM eastern time. It means he got a one-day headstart on this, with who knows how many of the 6000 or so adult members who received it already voting. I believe most of the membership agrees with me on what's needed to develop our sport, and if they read the campaign statements before voting they will side with me. 

Voting began yesterday - if you haven't voted yet, here's the ballot. And here's my Election Page. I need your support, and so do those who want to see the sport developed in this country - please vote!

Below are links to a series of blogs about my plans if elected to the USATT Board.

  1. Create a Nationwide System of Regional Team Leagues
  2. Create State Associations
  3. Create a USATT Coaching Academy to Recruit and Train Professional Coaches
  4. Turn U.S. Open and Nationals into Premier Events
  5. Create a Professional Players Association and Professionalize the Sport
  6. Other USATT Issues

Here's a perfect encapsulation of why I'm running for the USATT Board, which I've linked to before - "The Ping-Pong Apartments." I'm running to fix the Ping-Pong Apartments. And I plan to continue to be a Man in the Arena.

Coaching on Wednesday

I had three hours of coaching, including a half-hour session with a new nine-year-old who'd been attending our group sessions. He's already developing pretty well, but is a bit wrist-floppy on the forehand, and tends to hit the backhand too much from the side, sort of tennis style. After working on his backhand for a bit I was somewhat amazed at how fast he picked it up - soon he was hitting them really well, with decent topspin as well despite using a beginner's racket.

I spent time with two players getting them ready for the Nationals. One is focusing on getting his loop more into play. We're doing a lot of random drills where I push the ball to random spots and he has to loop from either wing. In practice he's getting pretty consistent, and follows them up pretty well, but will he be able to do it in tournaments?

I spent much of another session working with one of our up-and-coming juniors on serves. One of the best exercises is to learn to serve backspin so it comes back toward the net. This is not easy to do if you keep the ball low. It's also not something top players do very often - it's better to serve the ball a bit faster, so the second bounce is near the end-line. However, if you can learn to serve with great spin but so little speed that the ball comes back into the net - in other words, barely graze the ball - then it's easy to add a bit more pace so the ball goes out more. I think it's harder to learn the other way, where you aren't focusing on grazing the ball so finely that you are struggling to get it over the net. Acceleration is key, along with the grazing contact. The junior had never served a backspin ball so that the ball bounced backwards before, but after some work on this - where I had him almost scoop the ball up from underneath - he figured it out, and soon he was able to get almost half the serves to come backwards.

I discussed with one top player going to the Nationals the priority of his serve practice. Should he focus on just one serve (and its variations), and perfect it or, work on all his serves? I recommended focusing on the main one, but practice the others as well, both so they'll be ready when needed as variations, and so that they'll continue to improve for when he does focus on them. As I told him (to his great amusement), "Focus on the serves you are focusing on."

Two of the players I worked with yesterday are going to the Nationals, and so we used the limited quanitites we had of the Nittaku Premium 40+ poly balls. We used regular Butterfly celluloid training balls for the others (where we can do multiball with boxes of them). Sometimes it feels like we spend half our time keeping the balls segregated. (Yeah, we're segregationists.) 

My coaching was sort of interrupted when someone told me they'd received a mass email from my election opponent - see the "USATT Election" segment above. It was near the end of my last session, but as soon as I was done I rushed home to look into the matter. Not a fun way to end a coaching session.

USATT's New Look

See the new look for USATT's web page! I haven't had a chance to go over it closely yet. (Note that the cover picture changes about every eight seconds.) What do you think of the new design?

USATT Regional Leagues

One of the ironies of USATT so far not getting involved in developing a nationwide regional league structure is that they are going to someday miss out on the revenues from it if they don't get in on this soon. In much of Europe, players join leagues, and in so doing join (or essentially join) the national governing body, which gets some of these revenues. (I'm not sure of the percentages.) Why would they pay money to USATT if they started the league on their own? The national governing bodies of sports like tennis and bowling, and table tennis overseas, all are involved in this way, and get huge revenues from the ensuing huge memberships.

If USATT doesn't get on this, then at some point others will, and these independent leagues will spread. And if these leagues hit huge numbers as they do overseas, guess who's going to be left on the outside looking in, penniless and wondering what their predecessors were thinking? (Of course, if this happens without USATT involvement, that's still a good thing!) Without leagues to sell to the membership - the selling point for the hundreds of thousands of members in overseas countries - what will USATT have to sell them? We don't even have a print magazine anymore. If I get on the USATT board, I have a lot of work and convincing to do.

World Junior Championships

In yesterday's action, USA's Crystal Wang pushed European Champion Chantal Mantz of Germany to the limit before losing 4-3, 11-9 in the seventh. Here's the ITTF article. Here's the ITTF home page for the event, and here's the USATT's, where you can get USA results, videos, pictures, and quotes.

In the Boys' Singles Preliminaries, USA's Kanak Jha advanced to the Main Draw (Final 64) with a 1-1 record, where he will face Kim Minhyeok of South Korea. Alas, teammates Kunal Chodri (0-2), Krish Avvari (0-2) and Aashay Patel (1-2) did not advance.

All four USA girls, who already won the bronze in Girls' Teams, advanced to the Main Draw (Final 64). Lily Zhang was seeded directly into it, while the other three USA girls all advanced from the Girls' Singles Preliminaries - Prachi Jha (3-0), Crystal Wang (1-1 - see note above), and Angela Guan (1-1). 

Ask the Coach

Episode 41 (21:55) - Adjusting to New Conditions

  • Response to Yesterday's #PQOTD  - 0:30: Would Waldner survive in the modern game?
  • #PQOTD - 2:39: Should Table Tennis players use a Tennis grip?
  • Question 1 - 3:12: Is it better to block at the bounce of ball or at the peak of the bounce. I find that when I block at the bounce, it gives less reaction time to my opponent, but when I block at the peak I can control the block better against heavy topspins. Luke Woodley
  • Question 2 - 6:47: How do you know when you need to calm down? Should you call a time out when you are ahead, behind, or both? Should you call a time out when you are about to lose a set, or wait for the set to be finished? Nicholas
  • Question 3 - 11:45: I have been playing table tennis for 18 months and I have made it my life and my world. This is my last year in Under 15 category and I have 12 months remaining to practice. Pls advise how to practice and win. Aditya
  • Question 4 - 14:49: Our tt hall is small and the table is dead so that when we go to play matches in the bigger hall, we cant manage the strokes, and the speed of ball. When we change from small to big hall, how can we manage the speed, spin of ball. Akash
  • Question 5 - 17:30: What do you think about the rubber tenergy 80 fx compared to tenergy 80 in terms of spin and speed ? Thanks. Dat Pham
  • Discussion - 18:59: Vote for the ITTF Star Awards

Lily Zhang Willing to Give Up Studies for Table Tennis

Here's the article from Tabletennista.

Great Rally at the North American Teams

Here's the video (68 sec, including slow-motion replay) between Nigeria's Quadri Aruna (world #30, playing for Team JOOLA) and Ruifeng Xu of China (playing for the Atlanta team).

Susan Sarandon Dishes on New Flic, Plays Ping-Pong

Here's the video (6:35) from Good Morning America, with the table tennis starting at 4:25. (She's on to talk about her new movie, "Jeff, Who Lives at Home.")

Happiness is . . . sometimes no words, just the sound of a ball

Here's the cartoon.

Comeback Return

Here's video (30 sec) of perhaps the best (and funniest) example I've ever seen of a mistaken backspin lob that comes back for a winner. I just wish I could see the expression of the guy who did it, who is probably grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Sorcerers in Space (with Table Tennis!)

My humorous fantasy novel "Sorcerers in Space" (293 pages) is on sale right now at Amazon for $10.79! Retail price was $16.95. It comes in both print and kindle versions ($5.99). It's about the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon in the 1960s, but with sorcerers instead of astronauts, and the whole things takes place over one week. (Sorcerers work fast.) It stars a 13-year-old Neil [Armstrong] and fictionalized versions of many of the major political names from the 1960s - President Kennedy and his brothers, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Bob McNamara, and Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as dragons and other creatures that keep trying to kill poor Neil - including an attack meteor named Buzz. Oh, and Neil is a wannabe table tennis champion who has to drop his dreams of ping-pong stardom to save the world.

Or you can just buy my table tennis books!

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