October 8, 2015

Tuesday and Wednesday

Lots of iconic things happening! Here's a rundown of some of my private students.

Navin Kumar posted a note about his nice undefeated performance in the Tuesday night league. In a breakthrough performance where his forehand really began to come around (along with his usual blocking), he went 4-0, holding all of his opponents to 5 points or less, despite being the last seed in the group. I can't link directly to his Facebook posting, but this link takes you to his Facebook page where he put up the posting. (Navin's the student of mine who's been in the news quite a bit due to his partially mechanical heart and Parkinson's.)

Another student, 14, had been having trouble with his grip finally got things together the last two days. In the Tuesday night league he said he played the best match of his life, with his forehand the best it's ever been. But he was still having trouble with his backhand – until Wednesday night, when we spent the whole session on it (including hitting 321 in a row at a fast pace), with a little saturation training. By the end he said his backhand felt the best it's ever been.

Another student, 14, had a great training session that led me to wonder when he's going to start showing up in tournaments again now that he's way under-rated. But as he said, he'll have sleepless nights because of that one point we had yesterday where he drove me out of position on my wide forehand, then smashed to my wide backhand, and I switched hands and lobbed it back left-handed – and he missed! He said he's going to have nightmare.

Another student, just turned 11, finally got up the courage to stop pushing and began looping on his serve during league matches. It didn't lead to great results (yet), but he's now on the pathway to a higher level. He understands the importance of the change.

As I've blogged about recently, I'm tutoring one eight-year-old student in his writing. He and a ten-year-old decided to both write stories that featured my attempts to get rocky road ice cream, but ending with me getting fish stuck in my mouth instead. (I hate seafood!!!) One story involved me getting on a ship to Rocky Road Island, only to discover it was the Titanic. We sank and I ended up with fish in my mouth. The other one involved unicorns sharing their ice cream with me, only to (yep) end up with them stuffing fish in my mouth. The horrors!

Meanwhile, I've been on a binge recently on some USATT work that I'll go public with later on, probably in November. It involves the stuff I've been blogging about – regional associations, state championships, and leagues.

The Spirit of Pong and Sorcerers in Space

Recently I put the first two chapters (17 pages out of 100) online of my table tennis fantasy novel, The Spirit of Pong. Now I've put the first six chapters (46 pages out of 319) of my humorous fantasy novel, Sorcerers in Space. Enjoy – and both end with links to Amazon where you can buy the book if you like what you see. (Sorcerers in Space does have table tennis, though not a lot - the main character, 13-year-old Neil [Armstrong] has to put aside his ping-pong dreams to save the world. It's a satire on the 1960s space race, with sorcerers instead of astronauts, and Neil is a sorcerer's apprentice. (Both of these books are described on my Books by Larry Hodges page.)

MDTTC is Up to #2 in Sales!

Here's the Butterfly listing of equipment sales for the year. #1 is the WAB Shop from Canada, so they don't count in U.S. rankings. Next is the Lily Yip TT Center in New Jersey. Maryland Table Tennis Center (my club) is next, so we're #2 in the U.S. – and Lily Yip, we're coming for you!!! :) But congrats to all the clubs listed there, and all the other ones that help make this country more table tennisish.

USATT Athletes of the Month – September

Here's the listing. Winners are Timothy Wang (men), Lily Zhang (women), and in a four-way tie, the national Men's, Women's, Boys', and Girls' teams (teams) for their sweep of team events at the North American Championships. Timothy and Lily also won for their performance at the North Americans, with both winning singles and helping lead the USA team to victory.

Ideal Build for a Table Tennis Player?

Here's the ITTF article. It includes a link to a the video Anatomy of a Table Tennis Player (4:18) where European Champion Dimitrij Ovcharov discusses the key attributes needed to be the perfect Table Tennis player. (In the first paragraph it mistakenly says Ryu Seungmin won the 2014 Olympics, but he actually won it in 2004. They'll likely fix the mistake soon.)

I Wanted More Than a Silver Medal

Here's the article on Marcos Freitas from Tabletennista.

Off the Table with Thomas Weikart

Here's the new video interview (4:47) with ITTF President Weikart.

Interview with Jimmy Butler

Here's the interview from MH Table Tennis. (But I still prefer my version of the picture they used to feature the story.)

The King Kong Ping Pong Sing Song Ding Dong

Here's the picture! (But why do they use a picture of a moray eel instead of a gorilla???)

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