March 10, 2015
Recipe for a Regional Team League
Here's the Capital Area Super League recipe, which will continue to evolve.
- Find enthusiastic volunteers. (Such as Michael Levene and Stefano Ratti.) Allow them to simmer for a while as enthusiasm builds to a boil.
- Add a few other volunteers for spice. (Such as John Olsen and myself, the others on the league organizing committee.)
- Create League Rules and stir. (We borrowed heavily from Michael's and Stefano's experience in table tennis leagues in Europe, from the LA League, and from the U.S. Tennis Association. Plus we asked ourselves what we wanted, and what a new player might want.)
- Advertise like crazy so that interest begins to simmer, and so you get a bunch of teams and players. (This is only the first season; many locals aren't sure what it is, and are waiting to see. The goal is to keep building it up until we have huge numbers of players, including lots of new players, like they did overseas. This season has 68 players on 13 teams. Let's see how it grows.)
- Add a pinch of match cards, and continue to simmer.
- Ladle out the teams into divisions and create schedules for each, such as Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3.
- Serve fresh - i.e. play it out! (The first team match is on Thursday, March 19, at 7PM, when the MDTTC Lions (Raghu Nadmichettu, Stefano Ratti, Heather Wang, and Ernie Byles) take on the MDTTC Illuminati Potatoes (Chen Bo Wen, Reza Ghiasi, Khaleel Asgarali, Toby Kutler, Ryan Dabbs, and Amy Lu) at the Maryland Table Tennis Center in a Division 1 match-up. Seriously, that's the team names! I'll be there - I'm hoping I get to cut a ribbon or something. (Teams can have up to six players, but only three can play a given team match. Having extra players helps since not everyone can or wants to make every team match.)
- Regularly put up results and stats - they are the spice.
- Regularly send out press releases so the food (I mean table tennis) writers can write about it. Show the world that this is huge!!! (That's going to be my job.)
- At the end of the season give out nice prizes at a season-ending banquet - they are the dessert. And start planning out the next season!
As the newly-appointed chair of the USATT League Committee, I plan to watch and learn a lot this season. The plan is to create a successful regional team league, and then put together a league package that can be copied everywhere - and then promote the heck out of it. Like most recreational leagues, it's all volunteer run. U.S. Tennis does this and has 700,000 paid league players. Germany does this and has 600,000 paid league members. We're on our way. Later on we'll look into software for the league, with USATT perhaps buying or leasing it, and then leasing it out to the leagues for a fee, and then, like in Germany and much of Europe, the league players become USATT members. (We considered leasing the software used in England, but it's rather expensive, especially since we're only one league. For now, we'll run it ourselves.) Here's the recent USATT article on the Capital Area, NY, and LA Team Leagues.
Only Partially Table Tennis: Back Update - and Holy Mattress Madness!!!
This is almost embarrassing, but now I know why I've been having so many back problems recently. As noted before, my new mattress was too soft. I'd been using an air mattress for many years, but it had developed a leak, and I was having to pump it up every few days. So a few weeks ago I got a firm mattress, and life was fine - temporarily. But gradually, the mattress seemed to soften, and soon I'd forgotten how firm it had been. It got so bad that I even bought a "firm mattress topper" to put on top - but that didn't work either, since the formerly-firm mattress under it was so soft. Every time I lay on it, it put a strain on my back.
Last night when I went to bed I almost gave up on it, and was about to sleep on the floor - when I suddenly realized the problem. When I'd gotten the new mattress, rather than get rid of the old air mattress, I'd simply put the new one on top. Duh!!! This might be the single the dumbest thing I'ver ever done. (In fairness to me, I literally had forgotten the air mattress was under there.) The air mattress had very gradually lost its air, and so the new mattress on top was sagging into it, while the sides of the new mattress were held up by the frame around the air mattress. So I took the air mattress off, and put the new mattress on the platform underneath - and problem solved!!! The mattress is once again nice and firm, and should support my back for many years, or at least until I overdo it and try to race around and loop like it was the 1980s again.
Learnin' Experience: Read About 4 Main Keys to Improvement
Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina.
Private Coaching - Serve & Attack
Here's a video (10:38) of a private coaching session by Brian Pace of Dynamic Table Tennis.
Ask the Coach
Episode #91 (26:34) - Short Pimples (and other segments)
Kalinikos Kreanga Demo
Here's the video (9:11) - just watching Kreanga (formerly world #7) loop should improve you 200 rating points. You'll gain 100 just watching the other guy block (Greek team member Dimitrios Papadimitriou).
Best Backhands from the Bundesliga - Calderano vs. Boll
Here's the highlights video (3:55) - the best backhands of Hugo Calderano of Brazil (world #73, #56 three months ago) vs. Timo Boll (world #9 in February, former world #1).
Great Attack vs. Chop Point
Here's the video (42 sec) between Chuang Chih-Yuan of Taipei (world #8, former #3) vs. chopper/looper Joo Saehyuk of South Korea (world #16, former #5).
The Arnold Table Tennis Challenge Demonstration with the Terminator!
Here's the video (2:36) with Arnold Schwarzenegger! (This is different from the one I linked to yesterday.) And here's a pair of photos - Austin Preiss and Arnold now (age 20) and ten years ago!
Liverpool Football Table Tennis Championship
Here's the video (2:05) of the Liverpool football team (that's soccer for us Americans) having their own table tennis championships. Apparently Alberto Moreno, Javier Manquillo, and Jose Enrique went head-to-head for the prize. (Video shows Moreno vs. Manquillo.)
The Mystery of the Lost Racket
Here's the ebook for this 99-cent children's short ebook that came out in 2013.
Dynamic 3-D Cartoon Pong
"ping-pong" is so fun to say, isn't it? ping-pong. ping-pong. haha, ping-pong. Isn't this fun?!
Grandma Pong
Here's the video (6 sec) - if you can't beat China, then break china!
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