Tip of the Week
Looping Slightly-Long Balls.
ITTF Cadet Camp at MDTTC
The ITTF, in conjunction with USA Table Tennis and the Canadian TTA, ran a four-day ITTF Cadet Camp at the Maryland Table Tennis Center over Labor Day Weekend, Fri-Mon. Fifteen players took part in the camp, including five USA national team members: Crystal Wang (Junior and Cadet Girls); Derek Nie and Klaus Wood (Cadet Boys); and Lisa Lin and Faith Hu (Mini-Cadet Girls). Also taking part were Ivy Liao and Isabelle Xiong, members of the Canadian Women’s, Junior, and Cadet Girls’ Teams. The camp had nine sessions, 22 hours total. Here’s a group picture.
Wang Qing Liang (“Leon”), recently named a USA National Cadet Coach, was the head coach, and planned out and ran much of the camp. Other coaches were Cory Eider (USATT High Performance Director), Liu Yongjiang (Canadian National Cadet Coach), and myself (a USATT certified National Coach and former USA Junior Team Coach). Wen Hsu was the Camp Coordinator. Practice partners were Nathan & John Hsu, Heather Wang, You Lyu, and Yan Zhang. (Practice partner and coach is almost interchangeable as the practice partners were also coaching and often feeding multiball.)
If I listed every drill done during the camp, this would be a long blog. Let’s just say the focus was on footwork, serve & attack, and serve & receive. At the start of the camp, the drills were a bit more generic as they did drills where they had to cover a lot of ground very fast (i.e. footwork). More and more the drills became more game like, often starting with a serve and loop. There was a lot of service practice, generally followed by receive practice, with lots of flipping and short receive. One of my favorite drills is when the coaches fed multiball half-long backspin, and the players had to judge whether the ball was long enough to loop, or had to push or flip. As a feeder, I had fun trying to mess them up by feeding balls right in between! (It also inspired this morning’s Tip of the Week, Looping Slightly Long Balls.)
Physical training was a major component of the camp. Most sessions started with jogging and various side-stepping routines. Twice they did ladder drills, where they work on speed and foot coordination. Twice they did “plank” training. They also did the “hill runs” – there’s a steep hill just outside the club, and we made use of it. The kids had to run up the hills, jog back, and repeat about ten times. Then they repeated this running backwards. And finally they did it on their hands and feet – no knees or other part of the body touching the ground – and had to go up the hills this way backwards, feet first. It was torture great fun!!!
Several times in the camp they played matches, including a practice tournament, a team competition, and doubles. After each, the players were required to write out why they won or lost. You don’t learn from these things if you can’t do that. At the end of the camp Cory emphasized to the players how important tournament competition is – many of them are only playing 6-8 tournaments per year when they should be playing more like 20. The best juniors generally play lots and lots of tournaments, and it is this constant feedback – plus the incentive to train for these tournaments – that leads to much improvement. I pointed out that I’d heard coaches argue that one tournament is worth one or two weeks of training. I also pointed out that lots of tournaments is the cure for those who are afraid of losing rating – you both get used to playing lots of rated matches and so lose the fear of it, plus you know you have another tournament coming up in a week or so anyway, so your current rating is mostly meaningless.
Here is the lighter side of the camp:
- Amy Wang (USA Junior and Cadet Girls’ Team) was supposed to participate, but had to go to a separate ITTF event. But when we arrived, some of us thought she was there – and throughout the camp people kept thinking they saw her because Canadian Isabelle Xiong looks almost exactly like her! (They even play similarly.) I’m looking forward to seeing them side by side. If I hadn’t been told Amy wasn’t coming, I would have gone over to Isabelle and said, “Hi Amy!”
- I bought four mini-paddles at the USA Nationals, but they had cheap sponge on them, and weren’t fun to play with for many. So I put Tenergy on both sides on two of them – and the kids went crazy with them! They took turns throughout the camp during breaks, and put on quite a counterlooping and lobbing show with them.
- During break, Klaus Wood practiced various around-the-net sliding shots – and here’s the video montage (30 sec) of these shots in slow motion – they are pretty spectacular!
I’d like to thank all those who made the camp possible – ITTF, USATT, CTTA, MDTTC, Cory Eider, the players and coaches, and MDTTC’s tireless worker Wen Hsu. Without them these poor kids would have spent another Labor Day Weekend watching TV while their overseas counterparts were sweating and improving.
The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race Cartoon – Revisited
On Friday I posted my 2016 Presidential Race Cartoon, which I hope you enjoyed. The cartoon was made up of 77 distinct images, combined in Photoshop. (I still have the version with 77 layers, one for each item, so I can edit them individually.) Up until the last minute I was toying with sticking in something about Trump’s hair, but things were a bit jammed, and let’s face it, that would be too easy. (I was thinking about making his hair a tribble from Star Trek.) I also toyed with giving him a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, with an asterisk that said something like, “You realize I’m saying America isn’t great?” For Clinton, I toyed with putting some bulge on her back, due to the conspiracy theories about that being a defibrillator vest. But I’m guessing most readers haven’t heard about that one.
The original background images was Oh Sang Eun vs. Timo Boll. I chose the picture because I needed one where both players and the audience could clearly be seen. However, Oh is just standing there, so I removed him and replaced him with this one of Fan Zhendong. Then I removed the umpire, cleaned up the image, and put in all the other images.
Hopefully, most readers could recognize the people in the audience, but here they are, L-R, starting with the “Trump Cheering Section”: Russian President Putin, NJ governor Chris Christie (what was he thinking???), the Joker (from “The Dark Knight”), Dennis Rodman, Charlie Sheen, Sarah Palin, Mike Tyson, and the three KKK’s. (Rodman, Sheen, Palin, and Tyson are all publicly for Trump.) The two “Poorly Educated White Guys” are generic pictures of rednecks, and the five in the “New Jersey Muslims Jumping Up and Down Celebrating 911” are also generic pictures. Next to the aisle and saying, “We want to play” are the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. To their right, in the “Clinton Cheering Section,” are Presidents Bush Sr., Obama, Bush Jr., B. Clinton, and Carter.
3 Types of Serves All Table Tennis Players Should Know
Here’s the new coaching article by Werner Sigmund from 3TTabletennistraining (posted at Pong Universe).
Tom's Table Tennis Newsletter
Here’s the new one, with links to various coaching articles.
2016 Shonie Aki Scholarship Award
Here’s info. “The Shonie Aki Scholarship award, in the amount of $1,250 for one year, will be offered to a young table tennis player who has aspirations to complete a college education, become a better player and a productive individual who would reflect on Shonie’s legacy.” For more info, see the info page.
Butterfly Los Angeles Open
Here are articles by Barbara Wei on this 4-star tournament. Vladimir Samsonov won Men’s Singles over Huo Yingchao, while Zha Wenting won Women’s Singles over Grace Yang.
- Sept. 5: Vladimir Samsonov Wins 2016 Butterfly LA Open
- Sept. 4: 2016 Butterfly LA Open Tournament (results, pictures, video)
- Sept. 3: Vladimir Samsonov & Hou Ying Chao Compete at 2016 Butterfly LA Open
Butterfly Badger Open Bigger and Better in 2016
Here’s the USATT article on this 4-star Wisconsin tournament held near Milwaukee.
ITTF Releases Paralympic Games Table Tennis Media Guide
Here’s the ITTF press release.
Timo Boll Switches Hands, Loops Winner
Here’s the video (43 sec, including slo-mo replay).
2016 Ma Long vs Xu Xin - China Olympic Exhibition Show Hong Kong
Here’s the video (6:02).
Smacking Junior Players!
Here’s video (35 sec) of a mass of kids in a table tennis camp smacking five kids lined up against the wall with ping-pong balls. See what happens when you don’t give your best? (No, this wasn’t at MDTTC, but hmmmm….)
2016 Olympic Women's Final LEGO style
Here’s the USATT article and pictures.
Hulk vs. Superhero
Here’s the table tennis cartoon!
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