May 13, 2015

Miscellaneous Stuff

  • Arm Problems. I aggravated the arm again during the afterschool program. Normally I just feed multiball for this, but two players were sick today and another kid kept wandering off, so I was left with just one kid in my group. So I hit with him one-on-one. He was sort of an advanced beginner, spraying shots all over the table, forcing me to reach for them. Normally this would have been fine, but while reaching for some of his mishits at some point the arm began to hurt again. After the session I had a 90-minute private coaching session, but halfway through I had to stop and bring in Coach Raghu to do my hitting for me. I've already warned my students for today that I can only block in today's sessions, so we'll see how that goes. I might have to take another one-two weeks off. (It mostly hurts when I do any forehand shots, forehand pendulum serves, or feeding backspin in multiball. Once it begins to hurt, just holding the weight of the racket hurts it.)
  • Reverse Pendulum Serve. Recently I've been teaching this serve to many of my students, or focusing more on perfecting it with the more advanced ones. The key for most is to learn to contact more under the ball, rather than just behind (which is where you contact the ball when serving it long). Ideally, players should learn to use the same motion but be able to serve it both short to the forehand and long to the backhand. They should also learn the serve so that until the last second they can do either regular or reverse pendulum serves, i.e. sidespin either way.
  • Canadian Junior and Cadet Open. It's going on right now in Markham, Canada, May 11-14. Here's the ITTF home page for the event (lots of articles and results), and here's the USATT site, which includes a link to livestreaming. They just finished the team events, and it was all-USA finals in all four events - junior boys and girls, cadet boys and girls. Jeez, why aren't I there coaching???
  • US Open. This year's US Open, July 6-11, is looking to be a milestone for me - but a bad one. My first US Open was in 1976 when I was 16, and I've been to every one since at least 1984. However, I think it's been 24 years since I last attended an Open or National where I paid my own way. During those years I always had students who paid my way in return for my coaching them at the tournament. However, during many of those years we only had three full-time coaches at MDTTC - Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, and myself - plus my level of play was high enough that I could train one-on-one with our top juniors.

    Now we have eight full-time coaches/practice partners at MDTTC, and my playing level has gone down at age 55. All of our top junior players who are going to the Open train one-on-one with these coaches/practice partners, and they are coaching them at the Open. So it looks like I'll be paying my own way this year, and perhaps be a volunteer roving coach for some MDTTC players. (Most years I play in hardbat events on the side, even though I'm normally a sponge player, but due to injuries and lowered level of play, I'm retired from that as well.) Alas, perhaps it's the end of an era. I'm sure there are some out there who might want to hire me at the Open, but for now I'd rather stick to only coaching MDTTC players at tournaments.

    They are holding U.S. junior and cadet team trials at the Open for boys and girls (that's four tryouts), and I likely won't be coaching in any of them for the first time in many years. I miss the old days - it was just a few years ago, for example, when I coached Tong Tong Gong, and he came out of almost nowhere (seeded outside the top eight) to make the US Team two years in a row (top four) by pulling off nine different upsets while beating everyone below him. For that and all previous Trials I'd spend huge amounts of time studying video of opponents and taking notes, which gave our players an advantage, and it paid off, year after year. But at least I'll have a more relaxing time this year, since it'll be the first time in (decades?) that I won't spend all those feverish hours in advance studying videos.

  • Possible Booth at US Open. I'm toying with joining with a few others and renting a booth at the U.S. Open, where I'd sell my table tennis books. It's expensive, about $1500 plus shipping costs. If I did this, I'd be sharing the booth with others selling table tennis books, videos, and artwork. I'm sure I'd end up losing money on this, but it'd give me a place to sit back and relax for six days.
  • Samson Dubina Coaching Book. He hired me to edit it, and I've been working on it starting on Monday. "100 Days of Table Tennis Success" is looking to be an excellent book that I'll strongly recommend for table tennis players. I hope to finish my work on it by Friday, but we'll see. It's a big job, 181 pages.
  • "The Spirit of Pong." According to the online tracker, the proofs for my new fantasy table tennis novel will be delivered by 8PM today. Then I get to go over them and see if there are any needed changes. If all goes well, I'll have final copies in a week, and then it'll go on sale at Amazon in print and kindle formats. It's the story of an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis - and he ends up training with the spirits of past stars. More on this when it goes on sale. It's a short novel (technically a novella), exactly 100 pages long.
  • Non-Table Tennis - Story and Ad in Space and Time Magazine. My fantasy story "Leashing the Muse" is in the new issue, which I just received in the mail. It's my third short story sale to them, and 71st overall. My name is on the cover of the magazine. Alas, Space and Time is one of the few science fiction and fantasy magazines that has stayed with print-only, so there's no online link to the story - you'll just have to buy the magazine to read it! Besides the story, I advertised my humorous fantasy novel Sorcerers in Space on the back cover - here's the ad. Still more alas - with my increased table tennis duties due to USATT work, most (though not all) of my science fiction & fantasy writing has to go on hold for the next few years. Here's a description of the story:
    • "An English professor is disgusted with the poor work of his students. And then, due to global warming, Polyhymnia, the muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing, and rhetoric, and the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyn, is released from where she had been imprisoned in arctic ice for thousands of years by Zeus for criticizing his poetry. She decides her mission is to turn all written work into masterpieces, whether it be Milton, newspaper articles, or a how-to manuals. When any three-year-old with a crayon can write masterpieces, nothing stands out anymore, and so there are no more masterpieces. It's up to our English professor to capture the muse and convince her to stop, with the help of a super-powerful computer."
  • Upcoming Schedule
    • Samson Dubina Coaching Book - I hope to finish this by Friday.
    • Potomac Open - I'll probably coaching at the Potomac Open this weekend, Sat & Sun. (If there's time, I may also stop by and visit the Gaithersburg Book Festival on Saturday.)
    • Disabled Veterans - I'm running a camp for them next week, Mon-Thur, May 18-21.
    • USATT Teleconference - we have a teleconference on Monday night at 7PM.
    • Balticon - I'll be attending Balticon, a regional science fiction & fantasy convention, as a panelist, May 22-24. (It's sort of like a 4-star tournament.)
    • Tim Boggan - he moves in with me on May 25 for 10-14 days so I can do the page layouts and photo work on his Volume 16 of History of U.S. Table Tennis.
    • Summer Camps - they begin at MDTTC on June 16 and continue all summer, Mon-Fri, 10AM-6PM, for 11 straight weeks, ending on Aug. 21.
    • US Open - I'll be at the US Open, July 6-11.
    • TNEO - The Never-Ending Odyssey is my annual science fiction & fantasy writing workshop vacation, July 24 - Aug. 1, in Manchester, NH.
    • Plus all the usual group and private coaching! 
  • USATT Stuff - I've got lots and lots of stuff I'm working on here, but much of it will now have to wait until the fall. Most of my USATT volunteer work has to go on hold during the summer when I'm busy at our summer camps and private coaching - it's our busiest time, with kids out of school. (I'm on the USATT Board, chair the USATT League Committee, and am the USATT Regional Associations Coordinator.)

Ask the Coach

Episode #124 (31:50) - There are no limits, only Plateaus. 

Nathan Hsu: "I'm back in Tongxiang - China 2015 (Episode 1)

Here's the video (6:44). "Well, I'm back in China, and I'm going to try to vlog and stuff. The days are pretty repetitive, though, so I'll try my best to make the videos interesting. I don't really know what else to type... eh, whatever. This is fine." Learn what it's really like to train in China, or just wait for my upcoming fantasy novel "The Spirit of Pong"! (USATT yesterday featured my latest Tip of the Week on their news page, and ran it with a picture of me coaching Nathan at a tournament.)

11 Questions with Frank Caliendo

Here's the USATT Interview.

Not Just for Hipsters: Ping Pong Bounces Back

Here's the article from the London Telegraph from a few days ago.

ITTF and IOC Presidents Meet to Discuss Additional Table Tennis Gold

Here's the ITTF press release. "Prior to the Qoros 2015 World Table Tennis Championships, ITTF's President Mr. Thomas WEIKERT met the International Olympic Committee's President Dr. Thomas BACH in Lausanne, Switzerland." "The two Presidents also discussed the possibility of table tennis having mixed doubles or mixed teams as its fifth gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, in addition to the current lineup of men's & women's singles and men's & women's teams events."

Best of the 2015 Worlds

Here's the new highlights video (8:04).

New Japanese Junior Star

Here's video (1:33) of this incredible 7-year-old.

Death Pong

Here's the picture!

More Mike Mezyan Pictures

NOTE - If you are unable to see these pictures, all you have to do is join the Table Tennis Group - it's easy! Here are all the past, present, and (soon) future pictures he's collected. (I pick out his best ones for here - he has more.)

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