February 4, 2016

U.S. Olympic Trials
They start this morning at 9AM in Greensboro, NC, and continue through Saturday. Here's the home page, which includes the draws (see below), schedule, format, ticket information, playing listing, Live Results, and lots and lots of articles and other stuff. The matches will also be streamed live, with the women's and men's finals each night at 7 and 8PM. (Read over the format, but roughly speaking it's three consecutive days of single elimination, with the winner each day making the final USA team to the North American Trials, where they will compete with Canada for the final spots. The winner from the previous day doesn't have to play since he/she's already qualified.)

Here are the Day One Draws:

I was toying with listing and linking to all the articles – there are an even 20 of them – but wouldn't it be better to simply visit the page and browse them over there?

Regarding the live streaming at NBC Sports Live, when I go there there's a notice on the screen saying, "Coverage has concluded for the day." Since it was past 9:30AM when this happened, and the matches began at 9AM, I'm guessing that means they are only showing the finals at 7 and 8PM, but I'm not sure. I'll try it again later. The wording on the article on this says that the streaming will be "exclusively" on NBC Sports Live, and that "The coverage will include the Men’s and Women’s Finals at 7pm (ET) each night on Thursday (February 4), Friday (February 5), and Saturday (February 6)." I'm not sure if the "will include" means it will cover it before 7PM? (I've emailed to find out – will update here if I get any info. UPDATE: At 10:45AM it's saying, "Coverage to begin shortly," and then it's doing . . . cycling coverage???)

I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not down there this year coaching, but I have to face reality. First, I'm really busy coaching here in Maryland, and so would have to cancel a lot of lessons, though for something like this I can do that. Second, and more importantly, MDTTC has seven full-time coaches, and the other six are much higher rated, meaning they can both be practice partners and match coaches, and it's cheaper hiring one practice partner/coach than two. (Three of our full-time coaches are at the Trials.) I sometimes hate to watch the livestreaming of our players since I end up yelling at the screen things like, "Attack the middle!" or "Move the serve around!" or "Why aren't you using that serve that worked so well at 7-7 last game?" So I'll just get a lot of other work done, and perhaps peek at the videos later. (I did message with one of our players who asked me about tactics against one particular player.)

The Secret Workouts of Team USA's Top Table Tennis Players
Here's the article.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode 217 (27:45) - Bruce Lee vs Forrest Gump (and other segments). Here's a great quote: "I'm not a smart man, but I know what 11-love is."

Capital Area League
I've put up the results from this past weekend for the Capital Area League (for players in the Maryland/Virginia/ Washington DC area). The regular season ended with this meetup – here are the final standings for the regular season. However, we still have the Grand Final coming up Feb. 20 at MDTTC.

Teen Ping Pong Olympics
Here's the video (2:13) from CBS New York on 14-year-old Estee Ackerman.

Mini-Bat Pong – in Slow Motion!
Here's the video (14 sec).

The Humiliator (used at Game Point)
Here's the video (14 sec) as Adam Bobrow does a basic backspin serve. "What is happening here?"

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In reply to by ilia

I'm assuming they'll update the draw sheets, but so far the Men's Qualifier (which started at 9AM) hasn't been updated, and it's now 11:45AM. I'll keep checking.