July 23, 2015

Last Blog Until Tuesday, August 4 Wednesday, August 5, and the Capital Area Team League

I'm going on vacation! When most people go on vacation, that means the beach, camping, an amusement park, or something like that. Me? I go to an annual science fiction & fantasy writing workshop in Manchester, NH – The Never-Ending Odyssey (TNEO). It's for graduates of the six-week Odyssey Writing Workshop – I went in 2006. This will be my sixth TNEO. I leave very early on Friday morning. (On a side note, I hurt my shoulder in a coaching session yesterday and had to have Coach Raghu substitute the rest of that session, and I'm taking today off as well, so maybe I need the rest.)

And if you live in the Capital area (Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia), don't miss the Capital Area Team League segment below – deadline to enter the Fall season is Sept 7.

Status Report

This seems like a good time to give a status report on all the things I promised to do when I was elected six months ago in January to a four-year term on the USATT Board of Directors – so I'm 1/8th of the way through my term. (I'm one of nine members.) I ran on five big issues, and 12 smaller ones – see my Election Page, where I talk about each, including the goals of each, and a link to where I blogged extensively about each one. (Much of the below refers to what I wrote on the Election page.) Let's go through them, one by one, and check the status. (Note that this is all volunteer – I don't get paid a cent.) One complication is that I'm very busy in the summer as a coach, since kids are out of school, so I can't do as much from June-August. I'll be a lot busier starting in September.

FIVE BIG ISSUES

  1. Create a Nationwide System of Regional Team Leagues. I was recently appointed the new chair of the USATT League Committee. Earlier this year I helped start up the Capital Area Team League, using other successful leagues such as the LA League as models. I'm still in the learning phase, but plan to put together a prototype of a league that can spread to other regions. I hope to have such a prototype ready by the end of this year. This is closely linked to the next item, Regional Associations. In fact, the first three items here are all part of a new plan I'm putting together titled "Grow the Sport," which I'll go public with this fall. (See note on that in "Other USATT Stuff I'm Working On" segment below.)
  2. Create State and Regional Associations. I was recently appointed the volunteer USATT Regional Associations Coordinator. I've put together a rough map of what the regions might be, and a prototype set of bylaws an association could adapt for themselves, with any needed changes. I'll be working on this more this fall. Soon we'll be putting out a call for those who wish to get involved in their Regional Association. There are still things to be worked out – for example, do we go with the conventional setup of president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, etc., with them appointing club directors, coaching directors, tournament directors, and league directors? Or should these directors be the ones on the regional board of directors? I'll be studying how other associations do this, both in table tennis and other sports.
  3. Create a USATT Coaching Academy to Recruit and Train Professional Coaches. The first step was to create materials needed for such training. A big part of this is one on how to set up and run a full-time training center, which is where most professional coaches work. Yang Yu created the new USATT Club Development Handbook, which I blogged about on June 22. Between that and the Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook I wrote (and will donate to the program at cost), I think we have most of the materials needed. I plan to work with the USATT Coaching Committee on this. I may end up recruiting and teaching much of this myself, but I sure hope others can get involved.
  4. Turn U.S. Open and Nationals into Premier Events. The USATT CEO, Gordon Kaye, has taken charge of this. Some of you saw his initial results at the recent US Open, where there were an incredible 1064 players, new events, and the finals at Caesars Palace.
  5. Create a Professional Players Association and Professionalize the Sport. I've had extensive discussions on this with CEO Gordon, and he's taking charge of this one – but it's likely a 2016 initiative.

OTHER USATT ISSUES

  1. Mailings to past members. I'll make this proposal once we have something to "sell" – such as regional team leagues.
  2. Hidden Serve Rule. I blogged about this on July 17. As noted there, I've made a proposal to change the rules so that the ball cannot be hidden from the receiver (as is currently the rule) or the entire net (which includes the net posts) and its upward extension. I'm working with someone from the ITTF on this.
  3. Rules changes and the plastic ball. As noted in my election page, other than fixing the service rule I have no interest in other changes to the rules. That doesn't mean I'll blindly be against anything, but new changes have a high threshold to reach to get my support.
  4. USATT Advisory Committees. I have a bylaw proposal to remove "Advisory" from all committee names. We need active committees doing things, not just advising. This will be voted on in the August meeting, along with four other bylaw proposals I've made. (I'll blog about them later on, before the meeting. Note that bylaws proposals need 30 days' notice and 2/3 vote of the entire board, even if some are absent.)
  5. Committee Chairs. Another of my bylaw proposals for August is to extend committee chair term limits from three to four terms, and remove term limits for committee members. We are constantly losing great volunteers because of these term limits – it greatly handicaps us. More on this later.
  6. NCAA Recognition. After some internal discussion, I've concluded this is really an issue for NCTTA, but I will assist them if needed.
  7. Fix rating system. USATT CEO Gordon has already initiated some changes, including a fix to a bug I'd pointed out that allowed situations where players gained rating points by losing, and other problems with the online ratings platform. We appointed a ratings committee at our teleconference this past Monday, with the intent that they will take care of the various problems. (We haven't had a ratings committee in many years.)
  8. Publish USA citizens ranking lists. I'm told this is on the todo list. I'll look into this again this fall.
  9. U.S. Open and U.S. Nationals Info. Again, a work in progress. Hopefully by next year we'll have dates for these events over a year in advance instead of last-minute scrambles.
  10. Bring back print magazine if financially feasible. Well, it wasn't financially feasible, but we found a good compromise – Table Tennis Insider, delivered right to your email.
  11. Let members get on the USATT ballot by petition. I made the bylaw motion at the March 28 board meeting, and it passed (see Item I) – so now any USATT member can run. Remember when ICC's Rajul Seth, Jim Butler, and others were blocked from running? No longer.
  12. Change USATT's Mission Statement. Another of my five bylaw proposals for the August meeting. More on this later.

OTHER USATT STUFF I'M WORKING ON

  1. "Grow the Sport" Initiative. This is a combination of four major issues that go together: Regional Associations, and three things they would oversee in their region: Team Leagues, Training Centers & Professional Coaches, and State Championships. This will be central to all my USATT work this fall.
  2. State Championships. I blogged about this on April 17. Here's the listing of State Championships I put together, with a goal of having them in all 50 states in 2016. Even if we don't get all 50, if we get close, it's a dramatic improvement. CEO Gordon convinced me of the importance of this issue and asked me to take charge. This is part of the "Grow the Sport" initiative (see above).
  3. Junior Olympics. I'm working with someone to try to bring table tennis back to this. More on this later.
  4. Classic Table Tennis Brochure. At our major tournaments we have all these hardbat and sandpaper events. Whether you are interested in them or not I think we need a brochure on hand so people know what the heck is going on, and give info if they are interested in these events. I'm working with the Hardbat Committee to put this together – I already created a draft.
  5. Seeding at Open. We currently seed first by world ranking, and then by rating. The result is we often get highly distorted seeding. If a 2300 player plays in an ITTF junior event, he'll likely get an ITTF rating, which means he has a "world ranking." Most 2600 players do not have world rankings, and so often 2300 players are seeded ahead of 2600 players. Some of the groups at the recent Open were almost silly, where the best player in one group wouldn't be in the top three in another. I'm looking into a limit of how far down the world ranking list we should go before ratings take precedence.

OTHER NON-USATT STUFF I'M WORKING ON

  1. MDTTC work: private and group coaching, afterschool program (starts up again in September), sports psychology work with certain players, sending out regular press releases (leading to lots of recent media coverage). This is my "full-time" job, i.e. the one that pays the bills, along with my books and other stuff I write.  
  2. Blogging Mon-Fri
  3. Tip of the Week on Mondays
  4. Parent's Guide to Table Tennis – I plan to write this book sometime this fall.
  5. ITTF Level 1 Course. I'll likely teach another one here in Maryland. I'll look into it in mid-August. There seems a demand locally. I taught one a few years ago.
  6. Page layouts and photo work for Tim Boggan's History of U.S. Table Tennis books – now 16 volumes. (I also edited Samson Dubina's recent book, "100 Days of Table Tennis.")
  7. TableTennisBooks.com – a new project I'm working on where I'd sell table tennis books by anyone, not just me, and perhaps videos. Let's face it, I'm a bibliophile. I even collect table tennis books – 233 of them.
  8. Writing science fiction & fantasy! (I may do a sequel to "The Spirit of Pong," titled "Pongman.")

CAPITAL AREA TEAM LEAGUE

Deadline to enter the Fall season is July 31, so sign up now! The new season of the Capital Area Team League begins in late September. Last season we had 74 players on 13 teams; let's keep growing! (This is for players in the Washington DC/Maryland/Virginia area. The headline is in CAPs so locals don't miss it.)

Pan Am Games

Serve Practice

While I'm away, don't you even think about not practicing your serves! Here's the productive way to do it

Beat the Pick-Hitter

Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina.

Wang Jinxin vs. Adrian Crisan: Analysis of the 2015 US Open Men's Singles Final

Here's the video (8:40) from Expert Table Tennis.

Serve Practice Targets

Here's the video (33 sec).

Shanghai and Stuff – China 2015 (Episode 4)

Here's the new video (5:23) from Nathan Hsu in China. (Previous episodes are linked to the right of the video.)

Table Tennis for You Vol. 1

Here's the video (1:19) from Butterfly, where top players from around the world say, "Table tennis for you!" in English. (Disclosure: I'm sponsored by Butterfly.)

2015 Chinese Super League

Here are some interesting matches, with time between points removed.

2015 Asia-Europe All Stars Challenge Draw

Here's the article and match schedule on the event that'll take place Aug. 1-2 in China.

International Table Tennis

Here's my periodic note (usually every Friday) that you can great international coverage at TableTennista (which especially covers the elite players well) and at the ITTF home page (which does great regional coverage). Butterfly also has a great news page.

How to Weaponize a Ping-Pong Ball

Here's the article from Table Tennis Nation.

Spin, a Susan Sarandon-owned ping pong bar/restaurant, coming to San Francisco

Here's the article.

Puzzle Great in Town for Ping-Pong

Here's the article on Will Shortz, the New York Times puzzle editor, owner of the Westchester TTC, and who's played over 1000 days in a row.

Ping-Pong Ball Monster

Here's the picture! (Here's the non-Facebook version.) I linked to this previously, but I think it got lost in all the other items there, so I'm posting it again since it's such a great picture.

13 Seconds of Water Pong

Here's the video.

Medieval Ping

Here's the video (3:32)!

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