February 24, 2025

Tips of the Week
Here are links to the last two, since I was out of town last week and didn’t have a blog to post the link from.

2025 US Junior National Ranking Tournament I
They were held Feb. 13-17 at the Westchester TTC in New York. MDTTC had ten junior players there and five coaches. Since players in different age groups never played at the same time, we had more coaches than we really needed. Result? I didn’t coach as many matches as I normally would in big tournaments or trials. Fortunately, the tournament director, Vlad Farcas, let me use one of the tables behind the control desk as a mini-office, and I spent my free time there, writing both table tennis tips and working on a pair of science fiction stories. (As many readers know, my world these days is equally split between TT and SF.) The good news – I now have Tips of the Week through May!

The tournament ran on time, with some delays when a previous round’s match ran late. There will be a second Ranking Tournament later this year, tentatively in late May or early June. Here are some links.

Some of our MDTTC players did pretty well. Richik Ghosh, age 10, finished third in Under 11 Boys, and is now rated 2132. Ryan Lin, age 15, finished fourth in Under 17 Boys (with another year of eligibility), and is now rated 2459.

For many players, a Trials isn’t just an event where they try to make the National Team – for most, that’s not likely. For those players it’s a time to gain experience and find out what’s needed so they can make it in the future. Some of our players were still playing in ways that won’t be helpful for this – but a Trials like this opens their eyes to what they have to do for next time. For example, one player has a good backhand loop in practice, but rarely uses it in tournaments. I told this player this is the LAST tournament where he/she doesn’t backhand loop regularly. Another hits too much on the forehand instead of looping – after this, he/she needs to loop everything on the forehand unless it’s above his/her eyes or a reflex block. Another needs more tournament experience. For those in contention for making a team, it’s payoff time.

Weekend Coaching
I think the highlight of coaching this weekend was encouraging players to play the way they want to be playing one year from now. For many, that means less pushing and more attacking. As I keep emphasizing when they play practice games – up-down tables, games to 11 – if you can’t do it in these practice games, how will you ever do it in a tournament? The ones who fully grasp this and apply it will almost always become advanced players. One player received serves in a completely defensive backhand stance; we fixed that up. Another tried to “muscle” his loops rather than smoothly execute them, so I tried to convince him you get more power and control by relaxing and letting the muscles flow together rather than jerking mostly one muscle group, which is what you get when you try to muscle the ball.

I Taught Steve Aoki Table Tennis
Here’s the video (5:42) from Matt Hetherington. Steven Hiroyuki Aoki is an American DJ and record producer. “I had the chance to spend a few days at Steve Aoki's house in Las Vegas teaching him how to play table tennis. I went along with US Olympians Kanak Jha and Amy Wang on the first night who left him mindblown and even more eager to learn. The next two nights were spent trying to work on as much basic foundation stuff as possible, and Steve picked it up super fast. We also threw in a couple of cold plunges! Steve is the only individual in the world with his own residential PingPod setup, and it's really cool!”

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’ve been away for two weeks, rather than try to list every interesting article, here are links to some of the main news and coaching pages that have been active in that time, and you can pick and choose. I’ll get back to linking to individual articles next week.

Table Tennis on The Pitt
There was table on the Feb. 13, 2025 episode of The Pitt (a medical drama), titles, “1:00 PM.” I didn’t see it, but I’m told a character said he was a player from the South Park Table Tennis Club, and he’d been injured playing table tennis. Here are two screen shots, care of Chip Patton:

Panda Table Tennis Shirts
Here are three.

Cat Pong
Here’s the latest video (17 sec)! This cat is good – I want it in my junior training program.

Huge Number of Colorful Ping-Pong Balls Dropped Down Stairs
Here’s the video (27 sec)!

A Table for Two on Valentine’s Day
Here’s the cartoon! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Non-Table Tennis - Tucson and Tombstone, Feb. 18-21
Last Tuesday morning, right after the Junior Team Trials, I flew out to Tucson, Arizona, for three days of vacation there and in Tombstone. It was a great experience – I needed the break, and I came back not only more revved, but I also have all sorts of upcoming writing plans, both TT and SF.

In Tucson, I visited the Tucson Desert Museum, the Pima Air & Space Museum, and the Mission San Xavier del Bac. In Tombstone, I saw all four 30-minute Old West gunfight shows. One was a re-enactment of the actual famed gunfight at the OK Corral, taking place on the actual spot it took place, which was actually down the street from the actual OK Corral, which is where we entered and bought tickets. Two others re-enacted other famous gunfights, and the fourth was a comedy gunfight show. The main street in Tombstone is Allen Steet, and I visited all the shops there and bought more souvenirs than usual. (8 magnets, 2 books, 3 figurines, a blue geode, fool's gold, and 3 American flags stuck in my French toast breakfasts all three mornings in Tombstone.) I visited Boot Hill (which included a printout of who was in each grave – some interesting people there), took the Trolly Tour, went on a deep underground tour of an old silver mine, did the Ghosts and Gunslingers of the Wild West tour, saw the Tombstone Historama, visited Wyatt Earp’s house, and visited four museums: the OK Corral Museum, the Old Courthouse State Park Museum, the Epitaph Newspaper Museum, and the Rose Tree 1880’s Mining Museum (which also has the world’s largest rose tree in the world, about 90 feet across!). Alas, the Gunfighter Hall of Fame Museum was closed for the week.

One surprising highlight – the stars! Due to light pollution, you can only see a few in Maryland. Many decades ago, in the Boy Scouts on camping trips on Old Rag Mountain and other places, I remember seeing it for real – massive numbers of stars and the Milky Way itself. Out in Tombstone, far from most city lights, the stars were out again. I spent considerable time just staring at them. I also spent some time just walking up and down Allen Street, knowing Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday, all walked the same ground. I also found the spot where Morgan was shot and killed, and where Virgil was shot and badly injured. I even retraced the steps that the Earps and Holliday took on their way to the big shootout.

Non-Table Tennis – “The Worshippers Themselves” and “Rat Race”
My story “The Worshippers Themselves” (3000 words) came out last week in Black Cat Weekly, my second sale to them. On a faraway star system an alien genius is locked up in an insane asylum because he believes the whispers they all hear in their heads, which the leadership claims they are imagining, are actually the prayers of beings from a faraway star system pleading for help. He decides to seek the truth by finding these people and answering their prayers – with great difficulty and unexpected results.

On Friday, I sold “Rat Race” (2800 words) to Zooscape Magazine. (They specialize in "furry" stories with anthropomorphic animals.) The story takes place a million years in the future. Humans are extinct, and rats have evolved to take their place. Zuk, a ratropologist – an expert in rat history – is stuck at a cubicle all day with a tail-yanking boss as he writes sensationalist articles for tabloids about ancient rat history and their mistreatment by humans, while mocking the homeless rats outside his window who live on leftover garbage and seem to be enjoying themselves. Zuk hates his life but doesn’t want to sink to the level of the homeless rats. What to do?

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