June 16, 2015

MDTTC Camps

MDTTC’s annual eleven weeks of summer camps started yesterday. Originally local schools were supposed to finish last week, but because of snow days they pushed over and so yesterday (Monday) was the final school day. Because of that, we had a lower first-day turnout, and so I was able to mostly stay home and do various USATT and MDTTC paperwork. (We still managed to get over 20 players for the afternoon session.) I went in for a 5-6:30PM coaching session with Daniel, and then rushed home for the USATT teleconference at 7PM (see below).

Most likely I’ll be coaching much of the rest of the summer from 10AM-6PM, with a lunch break. I’ll likely have some coaching sometimes during the lunch break, as well as after 6PM, so things are about get busy. Add in the blog, tip of the week, MDTTC stuff (group sessions, private coaching, newsletter, and other marketing things), USATT stuff (don’t get me started…), and few minor details like sleeping and eating, and I’m about to will the earth rotation to slow down so I have a few more hours in the day.

On top of that, my arm was bothering me a bit after coaching nearly all day on Sunday. I’m going easy on it – today, after the camp is done, I’ve got a 90-minute session with two of our juniors, and I’m bringing in Raghu so that I do the multiball and blocking drills, he does looping and free play drills, and we switch halfway through. (Alas, he gets the fun stuff.)

USATT Board Teleconference

We had a teleconference last night, rough from 7-8:30 PM. Main topics included:

  1. Approval of minutes from last meeting
  2. Audit Committee report
  3. Review of Strategic Initiatives, including:
    • 2015 US Open (with 1065 entries and a few more to be inputted, the most ever, excluding special cases where it was combined with something else, such as the 1990 U.S. Open/World Veterans Championships/International Junior Championships.)
    • Fundraising/Friends with Paddles
    • Ratings (including possibly working with Canada for a combined North American rating system)
  4. 2016 US Open and Nationals
    • One thing being discussed is possibly flipping the dates, with the Nationals in early July and the Open perhaps in December. Currently the Nationals take place in December, right when kids are taking final exams, which has been an ongoing problem for decades. This idea has come up periodically for years, and seems an obvious thing to do.
  5. Marketing & Fundraising Proposal from Innocean (more on this later)

Tip to Speed Up Your Backhand to Forehand Switch

Here’s the coaching article from Expert Table Tennis.

Racket Position

Here’s the coaching video (54 sec) from Samson Dubina.

Table Tennis School – Basic Forehand

Here’s the video (51:24).

Korean National Coach Bringing Olympic Champion Spirit: Interview with Ryu Seung Min

Here’s the interview from MH Table Tennis.

RIP: Rosalind Rowe Cornett

Here’s the obituary on the two-time World Women’s Doubles Champion, 1951 & 1954. She and her twin sister, Diane, made the final of women’s doubles five straight years, 1951-1955.

2015 European Games

They are taking place right now in Baku, Azerbaijan, June 13-19. Here’s the official page, and here are results. Portugal just defeated France in the men’s team competition. Austria came in third, top-seeded Germany in fourth. (Germany’s Timo Boll had to withdraw due to illness. Here’s an article on Germany’s loss to France.) Germany won women’s teams over Netherlands, with Czech Republic third, Ukraine fourth.

61 seconds of Xu Xin vs. Patrick Franziska

Here’s the video. Xu of China is #2 in the world (#1 for 12 months until March this year), Franziska of Germany is #27.

2015 China Super League: Tianjin Vs Sichuan

  • Tianjin: Ma Te, Liu Dingshuo, Wei Shihao, Chuang Chih-Yuan
  • Sichuan: Xu Ruifeng, Zhu Linfeng, Lai Jiaxin, Tang Yushi, Chen Chien An

Here’s the video (2:10:47). Here are the matches:

  1. Chuang Chih-Yuan - Xu Ruifeng @ 6:40
  2. Ma Te - Zhu Linfeng @ 32:25
  3. Wei Shihao/Liu Dingshuo - Zhu Linfeng/Lai Jiaxin @ 1:13:35
  4. Ma Te - Xu Ruifeng @ 1:40:13

Lily Yip Feeding Multiball with Broken Hand

Here’s the video (17 sec). Hey, my arm hurts a little too!

Waldner and Persson Head-to-Head

Here’s the totals! Surprisingly, Persson, who is over six months younger, leads 53-50. (Waldner was born Oct. 3, 1965, Persson April 22, 1966.) But this includes matches since 1978, when they were roughly 12-13 years old. They played in the Men’s Finals at the 1989 and 1991 Worlds and split matches.

USA Table Tennis Bans Hitler from USA Olympic Trials

Here’s the video (20 sec)! (Can anyone translate what he’s actually saying?) I created this in just a few minutes. There’s a link so you can create them yourself, with a choice of multiple videos to use, where you just put in the captions. I challenge readers to come up with their own! (But let’s keep it clean; let’s not demonize anyone specific by actually comparing them to Hitler.)

***
Send us your own coaching news!