November 25, 2015

Last Blog Until Tuesday, December 1
I'll be away Fri-Sun for the North American Teams Championships, and have something on Monday morning, so I'll be back next Tuesday. Happy Thanksgiving!

DC and Philly Teams
This weekend is the annual Battle of the Teams, with the JOOLA North American Teams in Washington DC and the Butterfly Teams in Philadelphia. USATT ran news articles on each – one on the JOOLA NA Teams and one on the Butterfly Teams.

Want to play your best at these or other tournaments? Here's my Ten-Point Plan to Tournament Success. But for a tournament like the Teams, where you can play almost all day for three days, it's a combination of mental and physical. Make sure to eat well, sleep well, and above all, keep your mind clear. It's very easy to have an early loss that bothers you for three days, leading to disaster. You are going to have a bad loss; my suggestion is that if you do so early on, be happy you got it out of the way!

I'm stuck in a conflict with these two tournaments. The JOOLA Teams are in my backyard, in nearby Washington DC. I've played or coached at them (or their predecessors) every year since 1976 (I may have missed one year). Essentially all of the players I work with at MDTTC who are playing this weekend are in this one, and since I'm a coach, I go where my players are. So I'll be at the Teams in DC all three days – you'll see me possibly limping around as I sprained my ankle on Sunday. I was planning to drive the 140 miles to Philadelphia for one day, but I'm now in charge of one of our junior teams and need to be there all three days. The conflict is that I'm sponsored by Butterfly.

The North American Teams has a long history. They apparently started out as the "Inter-Cities" back in the 1960s. Sometime in the 1970s they became the U.S. Open Teams in Detroit. From 1976 to 1997 I played in them every year, at Cobo Hall, staying at the Pontchartrain Hotel across the street. It was an annual tradition. (One year we were snowed in on Sunday night and couldn't drive home, and so we didn't get back to Maryland until Wednesday afternoon!)

In 1998 the organizers announced that they had neglected to reserve the playing hall for the Thanksgiving Weekend, and so couldn't run it that year. And so I decided to run it myself. I called up convention centers all over the U.S. to get prices. I also called the Detroit Convention Center – Cobo Hall – to ask how much they cost, and found out that the organizers had fibbed – the hall was still open for Thanksgiving Weekend. (The organizers admitted they had decided to skip a year to try to get better prices the following year. A lot of us weren't happy with this lying.)

I considered running it in Cobo Hall, but it was looking to be a big job. So I contacted Richard Lee of North American Table Tennis, who I had co-run the Eastern Open that year, me as director, him as tournament president. (With 411 entries, it is still the largest 4-star tournament ever in the U.S., excluding the Teams itself, which generally gets around 800 players, but is still listed as a 4-star). And so we began to organize it. We found good prices at the Baltimore Convention Center, and so that's where we ran it.

There was a bunch of USATT politics involved as the people in Detroit weren't happy with us taking over the event. And so we renamed it North American Teams. Also, I got tired of the USATT politics about our taking over the tournament, and about this time began to realize that I liked coaching and writing about table tennis, but wasn't really thrilled about running big tournaments. So I asked Richard to take over, and while I helped, it was all his and North American Table Tennis from there on. The tournament moved to DC in 2013.  

The Butterfly Teams started out in Columbus, Ohio in 2012, competing with the North American Teams on Thanksgiving weekend. They received 206 entries, taking a number away from the NA Teams, which had their lowest number of players ever at 644. There was no Butterfly Teams in 2013 - the sanction was denied by USATT due to the conflict with the North American Teams the same weekend. In 2014 USATT agreed to the sanction, and it was held Thanksgiving weekend in Highland, Indiana. They only had 60 players in 2014, to the 832 at the North American Teams.

This year the JOOLA North American Teams has 714 players in 182 teams, to the upstart Butterfly Teams 258 players on 69 teams. The NA Teams is still well ahead, but they lost nearly 100 players compared to last year. Having a similar tournament in nearby Philadelphia, between them and the huge number of players in the NY/NJ area, definitely hurt.

For the JOOLA NA Teams, here are the numbers in recent years – online listing only goes to 2009:

  • 2009: 947 players on 242 teams
  • 2010: 886 players on 212 teams
  • 2011: 801 players on 196 teams
  • 2012: 644 players on 158 teams
  • 2013: 858 players on 209 teams
  • 2014: 832 players on 209 teams
  • 2015: 714 players on 182 teams (current listing)

For the Butterfly Teams, here are the numbers (from the ratings database, so I don't have the number of teams):

  • 2012 (Columbus): 206 players
  • 2014 (Indiana): 60 players
  • 2015 (Philadelphia): 258 players on 69 teams (current listing)

Here's the page where they are livestreaming the Butterfly Teams. Here's the page where they are livestreaming the JOOLA NA Teams. And is this the JOOLA Teams Mascot? ("Life's a beach," even if it November. Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Shoes at Teams
This Fri-Sun many players will be playing at either the JOOLA Teams in DC or the Butterfly Teams in Philadelphia. Many of us are spoiled and play at clubs with nice rubberized floors that are made especially for table tennis. On these floors you can play with just about any type of shoe and you won't slide around, plus the cushioned flooring is easy on your feet and knees. If you are playing one of the Team tournaments, you'll likely be playing on often slippery cement, with no such cushioning. So make sure to have a relatively new pair of shoes so you won't slide around, and if you have any feet or knee problems, you might want shoes with a bit more support for those three days. Also, learn about using a wet towel to step on every few points – they will greatly help on slippery floors. If necessary, visit the equipment booths at the tournament, and get a good pair!

Table Tennis Multiball Techniques
Here's the video (32:34) that demos various types of multiball that coaches should learn. It's in German, but you can still learn by watching.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode #192 (31:39) - 2015 ITTF Star Awards (and other segments).

11 Questions with Erica Wu
Here's the USATT interview with the 2012 USA Table Tennis Olympian.

Passionately Pink Pong Set to Paint USATT Nationals Pink
Here's the USATT article.

IBM Research Team Programs Drone to Play Table Tennis
Here's the article and video (18 sec).

Playing Table Tennis Against a Robot Tutor
Here's the article and video (42 sec) from the BBC. "Sensors above the table monitor the ball 80 times a second, allowing it to predict where the bat needs to be and to show where its return shot will bounce."

DHS ITTF Top 10 Shots - 2015 Swedish Open
Here's the video (3:18).

Table Tennis Stamps
Here are four (click on pictures to see others).

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.

Turkey Pong

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