April 17, 2013

USATT Goals

Wouldn't it be great if USA Table Tennis (or another national table tennis organization) came up with a specific lofty goal, made it their top priority, brought in the right people to design a program to reach that goal, and then put their resources behind achieving that goal? Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen due to the politics. If you try to focus on a top priority, all the other special interests want their piece of the pie, and so limited resources are instead spread out over a number of items, resulting in lots of weak programs instead of one or perhaps a few really good ones. Plus it's easier to implement easy stuff than to go for the hard stuff - and make no mistake, creating a lofty goal and trying to achieve it is no easy task. But it's a lot harder to achieve if it never becomes a goal. But I always hope that someday, somehow, someway, it'll happen.

No, I'm not volunteering - there was a time when I volunteered for everything. I could go on a rant here on what usually happened, but I'll refrain. Let's just say I don't have the time anymore.

Here are three possibilities, with a rough plan on how to achieve it. (Note that I didn't put "Create Olympic Gold Medalists" on the list - all three of these items would be a first step toward doing that, especially #1. The others bring in the revenue needed if we want to create top players, which is an expensive process.) 

1. Goal: 100 successful junior training programs.
   How: Recruit and train coaches to set up these programs. There's been a huge influx of Chinese coaches in recent years because professional table tennis coaching is such a lucrative field, but it'd happen a lot faster with USATT assistance. Right now it's developed rather haphazardly by word of mouth. If we sell it as a Profession, we can charge potential professional coaches for the training. (This is the primary purpose of the Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook.)
2. Goal: 100,000 members.
   How: Study the league structures used in overseas table tennis that leads to hundreds of thousands of members in Germany, England, France, and other countries (as well as similar leagues in other sports in the U.S. and around the world), bring in experienced league directors to design a U.S. version, and implement it on a regional basis. It could either be volunteer run, or the regional and local league directors would make a percentage.
3. Goal: Make the U.S. Open a premier event with tens of thousands of paid spectators and major TV coverage and revenue. (Another possibility: thousands of paid players.)
   How: Bring in experienced directors and promoters, and pay them a sizeable percentage of the revenue brought in by these increases. Too often in the past we've brought them in but only agreed to small commissions, and we ended up keeping 100% of nothing, rather than getting, say, 50% of a lot more.

Table Tennis Master

There are a number of good coaching articles in the Blog section of Table Tennis Master. Recent ones include "Special Tips for Developing Backhand"; "Common Mistakes in Forehand Technique"; "Encouraging Creativity in Table Tennis"; "How to Maintain Concentration"; and many more. There are a lot of sports psychology articles.

USATT Webpage Features Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers

The USATT Web Page Features Page now has a link to the ITTF feature on Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers.

Hawaiian Table Tennis

Here are two articles on Hawaiian table tennis that came out yesterday. "Never Too Early for Table Tennis" and "Athletic Chess." Both feature Hawaiian Coach Len Winkler and the local table tennis scene.

World Table Tennis Promo

Here's a promotional picture for the upcoming World Championships.

Dilbert Table Tennis

Yesterday morning's Dilbert comic strip featured table tennis - for the fifth time. Below are all five. These need to be printed out and taped to every wall in America.

• November 22, 2015
• April 16, 2013
• June 13, 2007
• August 12, 1995
• January 6, 1992
• September 7, 1989 (Dilbert in Action!)

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