March 30, 2015

Tip of the Week

Technical Problems Often Come in Pairs.

Saturday - USA Table Tennis Board Meeting

The USATT Board met from 9AM to 4PM at the Hilton Inn at BWI Airport near Baltimore. I blogged about this on Thursday, including the agenda. Attending the meeting in person were board chair Peter Scudner, Anne Cribbs, Ed Hogshead, Kagin Lee, Han Xiao, and myself. Mike Babuin and Jim Kahler also phoned in for certain issues. Also attending was CEO Gordon Kaye, High Performance Chair Carl Danner, USATT Legal Counsel Dennis Tayler, and Assistant Secretary Lee Kondo. Most of us met for dinner on Friday night.

Much of what went on I'll go over when the motions and/or minutes go online. Here's the gist of some of the more interesting items.

We started with breakfast (served in the meeting room at 8:15AM), then call to order and introductory remarks from Peter. Then came the roll call and conflict of interest statements. We went over the minutes of the January and March meetings, and they were approved with a few minor adjustments. Dennis Taylor gave us a legal update on several confidential issues. (This was also the Executive Session that was scheduled later in the agenda.)

Then came a long discussion of the committee members and their approval. There were some complications, but most were resolved. I'll wait for the minutes to go more in depth on this. I'm chair of the USATT League Committee (appointed three weeks ago), and all three members of the committee were approved - Adam Bobrow, Michael Levene, and Bruce Liu. There will also be a player rep appointed by the Athlete Advisory Council, probably Han Xiao, since I've been working with him on these issues already and he was on the previous league committee. Next was the financial report - all seemed well.

Next up was my Regional Association Task Force Update. With help from Han Xiao, I had put together a plan to develop state and regional associations, with a three-pronged approach: State Championships, Leagues, and Coaching Programs. There were lots of questions and some good suggestions. I'll post more about this later, but suffice to say that this is going to take up a lot of my time and energy over the next few years. One of my first jobs is to find out what state and regional associations are out there - if you know of any, let me know!

CEO Gordon gave updates on US Open and other issues. (Entry forms should be out soon. Yes, there have been complications.)

Next up was my bylaw amendment to allow USATT members to get on the ballot for the two At-Large positions by petition (i.e. 150 signatures). Currently the USATT Board appoints a Nomination and Elections committee, who chooses from applicants who will go on the ballot.

Going in I had no idea what the thinking on this was - I'm not good at inside dealing and didn't feel comfortable asking around on this particular issue. Only one board member had publicly declared his intentions, Kagin Lee, and he said he was voting against it. The difficulty was that this was not a majority vote - it needed six votes period, i.e. 2/3 of the entire board, and three weren't present. But for this vote, Mike Babuin and Jim Kahler both phoned in. I gave a presentation, giving three big reasons to vote for it, which boiled down to:

  1. Good Relationships with the Membership. Members who wished to run for the board often find themselves blocked from the ballot, with no recourse, leading to a lot of animosity from the membership and clubs;
  2. Basic Fairness. I pointed out the unfairness of a system where we have elections, but we choose who they can vote between. I also pointed out that the USATT membership makes up 100% of our membership, that they directly make up about half the income, and indirectly well over half. I emphasized we were talking about only two of the nine positions on the board, or 22%.
  3. Outside Energy and Fresh Blood. It's important for the Board to hear other views, that's difficult if we can effectively veto the candidacy of those we disagree with.

After much discussion, we made a few changes to the wording, and this is the final verison.

MOVED to append a new, Paragraph 3 to Bylaw 7.6(b)(3):
Any adult General Member in good standing at least 60 days before the record date, who obtains and submits to the Nominating and Governance Committee at least 150 signatures of support from current adult USATT General Members in good standing and whose membership is current as of the date of affixing of their signature, shall be placed on the election ballot as a candidate for At Large Director. Petition forms will be kept online at the USATT website and made available year round for prospective candidates. Signatures may be collected at any time between January 1 and December 1 in the year of the election.

And then we took the vote - and it passed, 7-1! I want to thank those who supported this, chair Peter for putting it on the agenda and also arguing for it (saying it was better than a previous proposal he had opposed because it gave an additional way to get on the board rather than replacing the current version), Dennis Taylor for helping with the wording, CEO Gordon for helping with certain logistics, and to Mike and Jim for phoning in. (If they hadn't, the vote would have been 5-1, and it wouldn't have passed, since it needed six votes. In which case I would have made the same proposal at the next meeting, and the next, and so on until it either passed or four people voted against it, meaning it couldn't get the needed six votes even with the full board voting).

Following that was High Performance Update by Carl Danner. Then came a discussion of plastic balls, led by Ed Hogshead, who pointed out the problems of so many balls that play differently being used in different tournaments, and argued for setting a date where we go all plastic in 3-star and above tournaments. The problem is that the different plastic balls themselves are very different themselves, and so unless we settled on one brand, it might not help much. No action was taken here, and most likely all we can do is wait one or two years until the manufacturers fix these problems with a more standardized ball.

We had a nice discussion of Strategic Vision. I gave my vision of regional leagues and coaching programs leading to huge memberships, and national tournaments and leagues allowing professional players to make a living in this country. (That's really two, so I have double vision.) I'm actively working now on the first part, and will be on the second part later - CEO Gordon also has plans, and so I plan to work with him on this, probably this fall.

And then we had a very short thing on old business, new business, and then we adjourned around 4PM. It was one of the best USATT meetings I've been to - I usually leave these things disgusted, but not this time.

Sunday - Coaching from 11:45AM to 8:30PM

Here's a rundown:

  • 11:45AM-1:15 PM - private coaching
  • 1:30-3:00 PM - group session
  • 3:15-4:15 PM- private coaching
  • 4:30-6:00 PM - junior group session
  • 6:30-8:30 PM - adult group session
  • 9:00-10:30 PM - got home in time to watch the season finale of The Walking Dead!

The adult group session was the Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class. Coaches Raghu and Josh assisted. There were 17 in the class, with two missing.

After the usual forehand and backhand warm-up, I had them push backhand to backhand for five minutes, both for practice and to prepare them for a drill we'd be doing later. Then I gave a demo and lecture on heavy backspin serves, where I explained how to create truly heavy backspin by literally scooping the ball up from just above table level. I also showed them some exercises, such as serving high backspins that bounce backward, and even games to play while developing this. I had them practice this for ten minutes.

Then we got to the main focus of the session - forehand loop against backspin. I gave the demo and lecture, and then there were lots of questions. Since they go together, I also went over blocking and demoed that. We got out to the tables a little behind, so we ended up going late. We had three groups, one with each coach, with the coach working with two at a time, feeding multiball to one while the other practiced blocking. The others did a drill where one would serve backspin, the other would push to a pre-arranged spot (usually the forehand or middle), and the server would loop, and then they'd play out the point. All six in my group were able to execute pretty good loops.

Backhand Banana Flip

Here's the new coaching article by Han Xiao, which includes a link to video of Ma Long.

Coaching Articles from Samson Dubina

Mental Training for Table Tennis

Here's the new coaching article from Expert Table Tennis.

Ask the Coach

Episode #105 (32:30) - Player of the Week (and other segments)

Oldest ITTF World Tour Title Champion

Here's the ITTF story about He Zhiwen, age 52, who just won Men's Doubles at the Spanish Open. "One week ago at the GAC Group 2015 ITTF World Tour German Open in Bremen, Japan's Mima Ito became the youngest player to win an ITTF World Tour title, when she beat Germany's Petrissa Solja in the final of the Women's Singles event . . . now one week later, on Sunday 29th March, at the GAC Group 2015 ITTF World Tour Spanish Open in Almeria, the host nation's He Zhiwen has become the oldest player to secure an ITTF World Tour title. Aged 52 years and 302 days, he partnered colleague, Carlos Machado to success in the Men's Doubles final."

Richard McAfee's ITTF Coaching Course in Dharwad, India

Here's the ITTF story of his continuing Indian tour.

PongStarz CEO Kim Gilbert Rallies for the KIPP Ping Pong Smackdown

Here's the video (4:02). And here's a picture of Kim last month helping a young cancer patient.

Pong Hero

Here's a new site that does equipment reviews.

Table Tennis Ideas Factory

Here's a new page with lots of video. It's in Chinese, but Google translated it all into English for me.

New Front Window at Westchester Table Tennis Center

Here's the picture!

Top Ten Points from the German Open

Here's the video (4:20).

Trick Shots from Editing Sports

Here's their Youtube home page, with lots and lots of links to trickshot videos. Since the word "edit" is in the title, I'm suspicious about whether they are all for real.

Nonchalant No-Look Behind-the-Back I-Don't-Care-Who-Won-Point Backhand

Here's the video (18 sec, including slow motion replay) as Renata Strbikova (that's the spelling!) of the Czech Republic makes this crazy shot against Wang Nam of Hong Kong. Note how Renata doesn't even look to see if she made the shot or who won the point!

Your Basic Behind-the-Back Backhand Smash

Here's the video (8 sec) - it seems like everyone's trying out this shot recently.

Balloon Net Table Tennis

Here's the video (1:45) of the new action-packed version of table tennis that's sweeping the world1

Jun Mizutani and Seiya Kishikawa Exhibition

Here's video (52 sec) of a great practice exhibition point by the two Japanese stars.

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