August 26, 2011

Off to New York City Open!

EDIT - BREAKING NEWS AT 10:30 AM - Due to Hurricane Irene, the New York City Open has been postponed.

I leave right after lunch, about 12:30, for the New York City Open. I'm going up with the juniors John & Nathan Hsu and their mom, and Jeffrey Zeng Xun. Jeffrey (when he's not playing - he's seeded fifth, and was the recent Cary Cup and Eastern Open Champion) and I will be coaching John & Nathan. I may coach a few other locals when I'm free - Ryan, Greg, Tim. I'm just coaching, not playing. There are 277 players entered in the tournament, and the Open includes 11 players rated over 2550 or higher, and 36 over 2300, listed below. Newly unretired Scott Boggan, rated 2447, is seeded only 21st! (See note on him below.)

  1. Ting Sun (2730)
  2. Zhen (Eugene) Wang (2729)
  3. Peter-Paul, Pradeeban (2682)
  4. Damien Provost (2636)
  5. Xun Zeng (2612)
  6. YanJun Gao (2609)
  7. Barney J. Reed (2592)
  8. Yue Wu (2581)
  9. Therien, Xavier (2564)
  10. Ebuen Jr., Ernesto L. (2561)
  11. Chu, Hiu Yu (2550)
  12. Mieczyslaw Suchy (2549)
  13. Nai Hui Liu (2515)
  14. Florian Mueller (2497)
  15. Hiroka Ooka (2494)
  16. Yu Shao (2491)
  17. Nguyen, Khoa Dinh (2488)
  18. Kazuyuki Yokoyama (2478)
  19. Choor Sime Oh (2468)
  20. XinYue Wang (2464)
  21. Boggan, Scott (2447)
  22. Raghu R. Nadmichettu (2429)
  23. De C. Tran (2423)
  24. Aronov, Nison (2402)
  25. Kurimay, Dora (2396)
  26. Michael Hyatt (2394)
  27. Yu Xiang Li (2390)
  28. Ludovic A. Gombos (2387)
  29. Tahl Leibovitz (2374)
  30. Thomas Pok-Yin Yu (2359)
  31. Doverman, Richard (2348)
  32. Slava Gotlib (2344)
  33. Wang, Rocky (2340)
  34. Mark Croitoroo (2332)
  35. Ethan Jin (2330)
  36. Green, Wally (2321)

Hopefully Hurricane Irene won't interfere. At the top right of the North American Table Tennis home page there's a status update, which currently says, "The NYC Open is still scheduled for August 27 and 28. If weather conditions require us to change the status of the tournament we will notify you here on our website and on our facebook page."

Update on back

I saw the physical therapist again yesterday. She's working on back muscles I didn't know I had until they started hurting! My daily routine has been upped from five to ten minute back stretching sessions, three times a day, in addition to meeting with the therapist twice a week. If all goes well, I'll be back to playing in three weeks.

Newgy 2050 robot

Because of my back problems, yesterday I did a coaching session at the home of one of my 10-year-old students, using his brand new Newgy 2050 robot to do the hitting. The catch was they hadn't set it up yet, so I was there for two hours, spending much of the time setting it up and figuring out how to do the various programmed drills (there are 64 pre-programmed drills), how to reprogram them, etc.  It went pretty well, though there's a lot still to learn about its capabilities. We got it doing various popular drills, including one to forehand, one to backhand, and the Falkenberg drill (three-shot sequence: backhand from backhand corner; forehand from backhand corner; forehand from forehand corner).

Backhand loop

Here's a very nice video (4:02) on the backhand loop by TTEdge.

Scott Boggan's first tournament...

...in a LONG time! He played in the Lily Yip Table Tennis Center Open, Aug. 20-21, and went 5-0, 15-0 in games! I believe he won the Open event - can anyone verify? His rating going in was 2447 (he didn't gain any - best win was Lim Ming Chui, 2094), but that was from the Paleolithic period, circa (I'm guessing) early 1980s or so. Scott is also playing in the New York City Open this weekend (Open, Over 40, Over 50 - how time has passed), so I look forward to seeing him there.

U.S. Leagues

Here's an answer to a question about leagues that I posted on the forum. (I updated a few things.)

I think the ideal situation is for USA Table Tennis to create a model of a U.S. league that states and regions can use. This is not a matter of USATT imposing its model on others; it's about having such a model so those interested in creating leagues will have a model to start with. This is how it was done in table tennis and other sports all over the world. At the 2009 USATT Strategic Meeting, I argued strongly that USATT should meet with German, English, and others from the hugely successful European table tennis leagues at the Worlds, to find out how they had created their leagues. Germany has over 700,000 members of their league competing in 11,000 clubs; England over 500,000. It's not a matter of their setting up leagues for a large membership, as some USATT officials believed; the leagues are what create the large memberships.

The key is how they created and grew these leagues, not their current status - though that's what we are working toward. Since we already send numerous officials to the Worlds, meeting with these league officials wouldn't have cost anything. Then we could take this info, study other successful leagues in other sports, and then get successful table tennis league directors in the U.S. to meet and create a model for a USA Table Tennis League that can be used by those interested. (I suggested we put a bunch of successful league directors in a room and lock the door, and tell them they can't come out until they have designed this model.) Sadly, none of this has happened that I know of; USATT is perpetually in a cycle of things we're going to do without actually ever doing them. I look forward to the day when they break out of this cycle.

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