Coaching an Olympic Figure Skating Coach

Yesterday I had the honor of coaching for an hour Audrey Weisiger, the celebrated USA figure skating coach. (She was coach of the 1998 and 2002 USA Olympic Team, and coach of Michael Weiss, and has also coached Timothy Goebel, Lisa Kwon, Christine Lee, Parker Pennington, and Tommy Steenberg.) She plans on taking a series of lessons with me at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. She was referred to me by John Olsen, a player/coach at the Northern Virginia Table Tennis Center.

Audrey had been playing with an extreme backhand grip, trying to cover the whole table with her backhand. Hitting a forehand was a completely new experience for her. When we started out, she sort of slashed at the ball with an open racket, and the balls sailed off the end. (Part of the reason for this was she was used to playing with a hardbat, not the sponge racket she was now using.) She also tended to either use no body rotation, or rotate the entire body stiffly as if it were one solid object.

Rating Cutoffs at Nationals

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the ratings cutoffs at the USA Nationals. The problem is that at both the Nationals and the U.S. Open they use ratings from well before the tournament to determine eligibility, but up-to-date ratings from just before the tournament for seeding. There's a somewhat good reason for this. Players need to know in advance what events they are eligible for so they can schedule their travel and hotel. So they used to use these older ratings for both eligibility and seeding. But this led to players with very high ratings getting listed with much lower ratings, both for eligibility and seeding. So USATT decided to at least use the more recent ratings for seeding, even if it meant seeding a player with a rating that was over the cutoff. While this does make some sense, it leads to a lot of confusion and irritation when a player is listed with a rating that's over the cutoff.

How serious a problem is this? Below is a chart of the rating winners and runner-ups in rating events at the recent USA Nationals. (Here are the results.) Of the 15 Champions, 9 went in with ratings already over the cutoff. Of the 15 runner-ups, 4 went in with ratings over the cutoff.

Curing the Flat Backhand and the Modern Topspin Backhand

There's an 11-year-old I've been coaching for a while who hits his backhand extremely flat. It's become the biggest problem in his game - it often comes out almost as backspin, often spraying off the end since there's no topspin to pull it down. I've tried for months to get him to put a little topspin on the ball by starting with the racket a bit lower and slightly closed, but to no avail. His sponge was medium fast, but not a modern looping sponge, more of a hitting sponge, which seemed appropriate since he was primarily a hitter on the backhand. (He does have a backhand loop against backspin.)

The sponge was going somewhat dead, so I lent him a sheet of a used looping sponge. His first few shots went off the end. Then he adjusted by closing his racket more, meaning he hit more on top of the ball - instant topspin!!! It was a simple as that. Later, when I fed him multiball, his backhand loop was also vastly improved.

You can put topspin on the ball with a hitting sponge, but the looping sponge made him do so, leading to a much better backhand. While he doesn't need the most high-end (i.e. most expensive) looping sponges, it's becoming more and more important for players to use modern looping sponges even if you aren't using it primarily to loop. They are just bouncier, and make it easier to rally at high speeds.

Tip of the Week

Learning to Counterloop.

USA Nationals and Open Entries

The return to Las Vegas for last year's Nationals in December led to a 48% increase in entries, from a modern low of 502 in 2011 in Virginia Beach to 743 in 2012, the most since 2006's 837. (The data used here only includes those who played in USATT rated events, and does not include players who only competed in doubles, hardbat, or sandpaper events.) The online ratings database gives the number of entries for every year back to 1994, with the event held in Las Vegas every year except 2011.

Here's a graph of the Entries at the USA Nationals, 1994-2012. Here's one for the U.S. Open. And here's a chart showing the location of every USA Nationals and U.S. Open ever. (While others watch Honey Boo Boo in their free time, I coach and compile lists.) 

From 1994 to 2002, USA Nationals entries were somewhat stagnant, ranging from 592 to 686. Then began a slow increase from 2002-2006, with 678, 707, 755, 829, and 837. Then it dropped to 730, then 604 and 597. After a jump back to 686 in 2010, there was the huge decline in Virginia Beach to 502, followed by the 743 in Las Vegas in December.

Suggested Service Rule

As I've blogged a number of times, many players hide their serve illegally, and many or most umpires allow it. It's frustrating to me as kids see opponents and top players hide their serves illegally and not get called, so why shouldn't they? It's almost reminiscent of the situation baseball players faced in the steroids era.

The current rule requires that the ball be visible throughout the serve to the opponent. The problem is that it's difficult for an umpire, sitting off to the side, to tell if the ball was hidden from the receiver, since often he himself cannot even see the ball, and must estimate where it is, and judge if it is hidden or not from the server's shoulders. Since I've coached and played table tennis nearly every day  for many years, I can see if the serve is hidden or not, but many umpires only see this type of thing on an occasional basis, and so have great difficulty judging it.

Technically, it shouldn't be a problem. The rules state that "It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that he or she complies with the requirements of the Laws." That's pretty clear - it means if the umpire isn't sure the serve is visible, i.e. legal, then the umpire is NOT satisfied that the serve complies, and so the player should be warned (the first time) or faulted. But most umpires do not do this, and so at the higher levels many players get away with illegal hidden serves.

There are other serving problems. Many players abuse the "near vertical" toss rule, and few umpires enforce it. But the advantage of throwing the ball backwards (instead of near vertical) is minor compared to the advantage of hiding the serve. The same is true of other common transgressions.

Beginner's Forehand & Backhand Loop

One week ago, on Jan. 3, I wrote about a "Beginner's Topspinny Backhand and Forehand Looping." This was about an 11-year-old who was learning to forehand loop, and was developing a rather topspinny backhand. I worked with him again yesterday. Jackpot!!!

When I say "Jackpot," I'm referring to how fast he picked up the forehand loop against topspin, which I taught him for the first time yesterday using multiball. We worked on it for 30 minutes, and he was able to do it pretty nicely. He still has a tendency to jam the table and rush the shot (leading to too much arm, not enough body rotation), so I kept reminding him to step off the table to give himself time to use a full body shot - but when I remind him, he has no trouble backing off and doing the shot properly without rushing. (Backing off against an incoming topspin and giving yourself time is key to learning the loop properly, since it's a longer stroke than a regular drive, and the timing is different. When you are proficient at the shot you can start taking it closer to the table.)

He also has a tendency to use too much arm in general, but we're working on that, and when he backs off to give himself time he's better at that. Overall, a very nice first day on looping against topspin. Next session I may let him try it "live" against my block - but only if he's doing it very nicely in multiball.

Regionalization

As I've blogged about numerous times, they key to huge USATT membership figures is leagues, along with coaching development. But the U.S. is too big to try to set up leagues all at once. The key is to break the country into numerous regions. Even England, about the size of Alabama, has nine regions. (The English TTA has over 500,000 members, with a population of 53 million, about 1/6 of the U.S., which has 9000 members.)

USATT has tried regionalization a few times. I did so in the early 1990s with the Club Catalyst & Creation Program, which had pretty good results. I explained this program at the 2009 Strategic Meeting and at other times to board members. Here are excerpts from an email where I explained this to a board member yesterday.

We actually started regionalization in the early 1990s. I created the program, called the Club Catalyst & Creation Program. (That was my sense of humor at work - the acronym was CCCP. Google it if you don't recognize it, and note that the CCCP fell right about this time.) Dan Seemiller was president at the time, and strongly supported the program.

I was chair of the Coaching Committee, and started the process by appointing (if I remember my numbers correctly) 43 state coaching directions. Then I switched to chairing the Club Committee, and appointed 47 state club directors. (All of these appointments were made with consultation of locals.) The next stop was to appoint state league directors, which we were about to do before disaster struck in 1995 (see below).

The purpose of all these directors was to set up a club in every city with a population over 50,000 (I created a list), then a coach and league for each club. Once we had the state league directors set up, I was going to get a group of them together to plan out the actual creation of a nationwide network of regional leagues.

The Schools Petition

Hopefully by now you're one of the 951 people who have signed the petition to "Include and recognize the sport of Table Tennis Aka 'Ping Pong' as part of a school's athletic curriculum of choice." I first blogged about this back on Dec. 13 the day after it was created by the enterprising Joel Mitchell (and I was the fifth person to sign), and I blogged about it again on Jan. 4 (Friday). It's now featured on the USATT home page. I think it's great that we're working together on this. 

Unfortunately, to get a response from the White House we need at least 25,000 signatures by Jan. 11, which is this Friday. We're only 24,049 away!!! (And in the time it took me to write this blog, we got two more signatures - we're up to 953!)

So let's be honest; unless someone famous (hi Susan Sarandon) gets this on some extremely watched TV show, we're not going to get those 24,000+ signatures in the next three days. But suppose we did? Are schools really the answer?

Schools are Not the Answer (Not Yet)

Tip of the Week

Six Great Rallying Tactics.

Can a "2200 Player" Have the Experience to Coach at a High Level?

The question of whether a lower-rated player has the experience to be a top-level coach often comes up. The answer is yes, but rarely. I've seen numerous lower-rated players - some as low as 1100 - who were excellent coaches, even for high-level players. (I've also seen many former world-class players who couldn't coach at all.)

Some believe they can gain the needed experience to coach at the higher levels simply by watching the top players, usually on video. You can learn a lot that way, but if you think you can gain the experience to be a high-level coach just by watching the top players, you are kidding yourself. You not only have to watch them now, but you have to watch them on a regular basis as they develop. The key is not only knowing what they do now, but how they go there.

It also takes a certain type of mindset. If you watch top players play and gain strong opinions on how to coach players to reach that level, you are on the wrong course. You absolutely have to see what they do as they develop, in the playing hall while training and working with their coaches, and learn from this observing. There is no substitute for this. If you want to be a good coach, then find excuses to come watch these practice sessions. Do this for a few dozen sessions and you'll become knowledgeable. Do this for a few years and you have a chance to become a really good coach.

How to Deal with Beginners at a Club

This is a semi-regular topic at table tennis forums, so I thought I'd address it.

Believe it or not, I actually did a skit on this for the USA Table Tennis Board of Directors about 10-12 years ago. It was probably the only skit ever done during one of their live meetings - and you wonder why I can never convince them to do anything!!!

They were discussing how to increase membership, a perennial topic for discussion, but rarely one for action. The problem was that none of the people in the discussion had any serious experience at the club level, which of course is where you get new players. (I've been doing this for decades.) The question of increasing USATT membership and how to deal with beginners at a club really are the same thing. In both cases we are trying to convert non-serious players into serious players - which mostly means converting one of the 15 million or so recreational players into one of  9000 USATT members. (That's roughly a 1700-1 ratio; we aren't converting very well.)

There are three types of beginners. (I'll get to them in a minute.) I'd explained this to the board numerous times, but generally to deaf ears, often to people with strong opinions that are not based on hands-on experience. I needed to find a way to get their attention and show them what really happens at the club level, and how we can convert these three types of new players into USATT members. It was while sitting in that board meeting, listening to discussions on how to increase membership by people who didn't know how to, that I hit on the idea of a skit to get their attention.