August 25, 2015 | TableTennisCoaching.com

Tip of the Week

Vary Your Receive - Exhibit A: Receiving a Short Backspin Serve to the Forehand.

USATT Board Meeting in Chicago

On Friday morning I flew to Chicago for the USATT Board meeting, which took place Friday night and all day Saturday at the O'Hare Airport Hilton. I literally flew to the airport, walked across the street to the hotel, and the following day, immediately after the meeting ended, ran (because I was late for my flight, which I barely made) back across the street and flew home. Most of what I saw of Chicago was from the hotel window.

Six of the nine USATT board members were present, including Carolyne Savini at her first meeting (replacing Jim Kahler), as well as myself, Peter Scudner, Mike Babuin, Kagin Lee, and Anne Cribbs. Also in attendance were CEO Gordon Kaye, High Performance Committee Chair Carl Danner, and USATT Legal Counsel Dennis Taylor. Two other board members (Ed Hogshead and Han Xiao) joined in by speakerphone at key times to take part in discussions and vote. (Missing was Ed Levy, who was in England.) This was important since there were a number of bylaw votes, which required 2/3 of the entire board - so six votes were needed, regardless of how many people were present. If five were present (a quorum, which allows a vote), and a bylaw "passes" 5-0, it doesn't pass - it misses by a vote.

Last Thursday I blogged about the six motions I'd be making. The first one, changing the Hardbat Committee to the Classic Table Tennis Committee (covering both hardbat and sandpaper) passed unanimously (either 6-0 or 8-0 – forget if the two on speakerphone were present at that time).

Later we got the five bylaw proposals that I blogged about on Thursday. Here's the rundown - refer to the Thursday blog for details and the rationale for each. I prefaced my presentation by making it clear that I'll likely never make another bylaw proposal. (Alas, I'll be making one more - see #4 below.)

MOVE to append Bylaws 9.1, 9.3, and 9.16 by deleting the one instance of the word "advisory" in each.
This passed unanimously, I believe 8-0.

MOVE to append Bylaw 9.1, with a one-sentence addition to the end of paragraph 1 in brackets, plus two minor grammar edits.
There was much discussion of this, with different interpretations of what the bylaw said, and several others thought it unnecessary. Since it wouldn't pass and was probably the least important one to me, I withdrew it. I don't plan to revisit it.

MOVE to append Bylaw 9.3 by the following, with the two additions in brackets:
Board Chair Peter Scudner thought adding the word "normally" (as in my motion) was sufficient, and that the second half of it wasn't needed. I decided to go with that, and so we added only the one word. I believe it passed 8-0. This means that while USATT committees normally would have five members, they can have more (or less), at the discretion of the committee chair and the board. (Before they could not exceed five.)

MOVE to append Bylaw 9.5 Term Limits by the following. Change from:
Current wording: "No committee member shall serve for more than three (3) consecutive terms."
Proposed wording, with the changes in bold: "No committee chair shall serve as chair for more than four (4) consecutive terms."
Several others on the board wanted to keep term limits to force us to bring in new people, even at the cost of losing good ones (my argument - see rationale on Thursday). The vote was 4-4, and so it failed. I've already put in a new bylaw proposal for the October teleconference to increase term limits from three to four terms, which seemed to be a compromise, and it will likely pass unanimously. (Note - none of this will affect me, as I only plan one or at most two terms as chair of the League Committee. You can quote me on this!)

MOVE to change USATT's Mission Statement.
As I explained in my rationale, I never liked the USATT's "shopping list" mission statement. Others disagreed. There was discussion of changing it to something else, and perhaps someone will, but when it became obvious it wouldn't pass, I withdrew it, and I don't plan to revisit it.

Aside from above, what happened? Here's a rundown. In a few days the listing of votes will be posted, and later on the more detailed minutes.

Friday night: dinner at 7PM, then roll call, conflict of interest statements (none had any), introduction of new board member Carolyne Savini, approval of minutes from July teleconference, and a long discussion of the 2018 World Veterans Championships to be held in Las Vegas. This ended with me making a motion to authorize CEO Gordon Kaye to negotiate with the primary backers and organizers for the event. It passed unanimously. We finished around 9:30PM.

Saturday was much busier as we met from 8:30AM to about 4:30PM. The first item was my motion on the Hardbat Committee (see above and Thursday's blog). Then came a roughly one-hour financial report - all is well (I think).

Next came Kagin Lee's Rules Committee report, which I presume he'll report on later, and I'll link to it. There was a lot of discussion of how best to present the USATT rules, as they are mostly the same as ITTF rules, but there are differences. USATT will be making some rules proposals to ITTF. The most interesting was this one: 2.10.1.16: A player shall score a point ... "If an opponent deliberately disturbs the conditions of play in a way which could affect the outcome of the rally." Currently, if a player were to pop the ball up, he could scream at his opponent or perhaps "accidentally" throw his racket toward him, in an attempt to get him to miss. There's no rule against this, and so an umpire can at most call a let for the disturbance, and perhaps yellow-card the player (i.e. a warning). And so the player getting the popup would only get a let instead of winning the point. There were two other proposals on timeouts, and one that required ITTF approved rubber on even a non-hitting side, so the opponent and/or doesn't have to keep track of whether the player has hit the ball with the illegal side.

Kagin then gave the annual National Collegiate Table Tennis Association Report. Then came my five bylaw proposals (see above).

Next was a lot of discussion of ways to enhance the US Open and Nationals. Then came Carl Danner's High Performance Committee report - lots of discussion there, especially about the potential strength of the 2016 women's team, leading to requests to the USOC for more funding. I believe he'll post something about this later. I requested that the team coaches give reports on the relative strengths of U.S. players, which would be emailed to USATT coaches. For example, many elite USA juniors seem to be weaker on receive on average than their overseas counterparts - and if so, the team coaches could request our coaches to focus more on this.

We had lunch (catered sandwiches), and went back to work. CEO Gordon had a number of presentations, on membership, on sponsorship and fundraising, and one other issue that required a closed session. These took up much of the afternoon. There was a lot of discussion on membership fees for players who only compete in leagues, something we hope to greatly increase.

Next came presentations from Kagin on the USATT Approved Equipment Program, and on the Ratings Task Force. The latter, like all past attempts to improve the rating system, is running into the usual conflict between wanting a system that encourages participation (and so you can accumulate points) and accuracy (where there's more accuracy but less incentive). We're still looking for a good compromise.

Then came a closed session covering some legal business, and we were done! (But not before I quipped about my blog on Top Ten Things if Donald Trump were Running USATT.) As noted above, I then had to run to the airport, go through a LONG security line, and arrived at my gate at 5:28PM - with the doors closing at 5:30PM. I got back late on Saturday night, and managed to put in a full day's coaching on Sunday. (I love flying - it's an excuse to sit back and read a novel!)

The Spin-NoSpin Serve

Here's the new coaching article by Han Xiao.

The Common theme: Learn to Maximize Your Tournament Performance

Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina.

Ma Long Technique

Forehand serves (2:00)

Backhand serves (2:35)

Forehand and Backhand (5:16)

Sam Preistley: Expert in a Year Book

Here's the podcast (30 min) from Expert Table Tennis.

Health Benefits of Table Tennis

Here's a demographic article on the topic.

Timo Boll Not Qualified to the 2015 World Cup

Here's the article from Tabletennista. Wow - just wow. There are so few Europeans that actually can compete with the top Asian players, and now there's one less, and perhaps the most interesting one. He's #7 in the world (formerly #1), and #2 in the world outside China (4 players ahead of him) and Japan (1). I suggest they take a good hard look at the qualifying rules. With all due respect to the Swedish Junior Champion, he's only #105 in the world, and he's going in place of Timo? (Here are the world rankings.)

USATT Perks Program

Here's the USATT article.

2016 USA Men's and Women's National Team Selection Procedure

Here's the USATT info page.

11 Questions with Matthew Winkler

Here's the USATT interview.

Interview with Sanil Shetty

Here's the USATT Interview.

Shonie Aki Scholarship Award

Here's the info page.

"Top Spin" Review: A King Kong of Ping-Pong Movies

Here's the review from the Wall Street Journal. (The WSJ covers ping-pong movies? Does that mean our sport has made, or that they have lowered their standards?)

Ticks Across the Board for Carmencita Alexandrescu

Here's the interview from MH Table Tennis.

Jan-Ove Waldner Challenges Li Xiaoxia

Here's the article.

Kasumi Ishikawa – Off the Table

Here's the ITTF video interview with the world #5 woman (4:20, in Japanese with English subtitles).

Timo Boll – Off the Table

Here's the ITTF video interview with the world #7 man (5:33, in English).

Dimitrij Ovtcharov vs. Yuya Oshima in Champions League

Here's the video (4:37).

Timo Boll vs. Oh Sang Eun in Champions League

Here's the highlights video (2:57).