December 31, 2015

Happy New Year!
Tomorrow is New Year's Day – and I'm spending the day in bed reading. Happy New Year, and see you next Monday!

2016 USATT Resolutions

  1. State Championships in all 50 states. Realistically, this isn't going to happen in 2016, but if we strive for 50, I'll likely get a lot more than if I strive for less. In 2015 we had 13 states with state championships, plus another 16 with state games. Since we started the State Championships Initiative, we've gotten nine new states planning state championships in 2016 - CA, DC, IL, MA, MD, NV, NY, SC, and TN. (For this, I'm counting DC as a state.)
  2. Double the Number of Regional Team Leagues. Since we started the Regional Team League Initiative, and created a USATT League Page, we've had interest in such leagues in a number of regions, including Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Long Island. There are currently seven regional team leagues that I know of (see listing from Regional Team League Initiative), so the goal is 14. We might not get that, but we'll strive for it. Of equal importance is growing the current leagues.
  3. Get USATT to Recruit and Train Professional Coaches. I've blogged about this many times, such as here. It's not enough to just hold courses where we teach coaches how to coach. We need to recruit and train professional coaches, and teach them how to set up and run programs, and make a living as a professional coach. I'm not sure yet if this will be a 2016 or 2017 initiative, but it has to start sometime.
  4. Get Started on a U.S. Professional League or Circuit. I've discussed this issue with the USATT CEO, and we expect to begin work on this sometime this year.
  5. Solve the Hidden Serve Problem. It's a huge problem, though many from USATT are still blind to the serious cheating in our sport. We have to either get umpires and referees to enforce the rules as they are written (meaning calling any serve that they are not "sure" are legal, as the rules require), change the rules so they are more easily enforced, or (as a last, unhappy step) simply allow hidden serves again, though that would be a step backward. Until we resolve this problem, most of our national titles will be decided by umpires allowing top players to cheat, where we reward the cheaters and cheat the honest ones.

2016 Personal New Year's Resolutions

  1. Get weight to 170 pounds, and then keep it under 172. From Oct. 1 to Dec. 12 I went from 196 to 179. I was 182 when I returned Dec. 26, and have managed to drop back to 180 since.
  2. Write sequel to "Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions." The SF novel comes out at the end of January. (Here's where I blogged about it, and the initial press release on it; another should be coming out soon, along with the cover. It has lots of table tennis!) I'm 17,000 words into the sequel, "Campaign 2110: Scorpions in Space," but it's been on hold the last month due to other work, the Nationals, and the holidays. (First one was 123,000 words.)
  3. Sequel to "Pings and Pongs." Hint – it's already done! In fact, here's the kindle version. The print version should go online in a few days. It has the 25 best stories I've sold since 2012.
  4. Have a Successful SF Convention Tour. I'm currently scheduled for nine science fiction conventions in 2016 where I'll be promoting my Campaign 2100 novel. I'll be doing readings, book signings, and panels. There'll also be a lot of online promotions.
  5. Another Year of Blogging and Table Tennis Tips. It's not easy putting together a blog five times a week, but somehow I'll manage to keep it up. With one more year of weekly Tips, I'll be able to put together a sequel to Table Tennis Tips, which will be creatively titled More Table Tennis Tips.
  6. Coaching at Big Tournaments. I consider tactical coaching my biggest strength, and so look forward to doing so at the big tournaments. I'm hoping to make it to at least ten major tournaments in 2016 – the U.S. Nationals, U.S. Open, the Teams, U.S. Team Trials, and at least six other 4-star tournaments.

Other Happenings
It's been a busy week, as always. Plus I'm rather tired right now. Since 4AM this morning I've received eleven phone calls from someone in Tunisia who only speaks French, which I don't speak. I keep asking why he's calling, but since he apparently doesn't speak English, we're not communicating – but he keeps calling back. I will likely have to look into how you block someone from calling you. (He's called five times while I wrote this blog. I just hit the "end call" icon each time.) He woke me up at 4AM and again at 6AM with his calls – I normally get up around 7AM.

I'm doing an hour of coaching at noon, and then I'm done until Sunday. I'll get a lot of reading done, and probably see a couple of movies. Plus I'm working on two new short science fiction stories, one about a super-being marooned in a contracting universe and about to get caught in the "Big Crunch," and another about Santa Claus reluctantly getting caught up in distributing guns to human rebels against alien conquerors. I'm also working on sequel to my upcoming SF novel (see above), but that's on hold for the moment. I sold a humorous story to Galaxy's Edge just a few days ago, "Penguins in Noah's Ark," which you can guess was about two penguin's journey from Antarctica to the Middle East in time for Noah's Ark. (It has Panthera atrox lions and saber tooth tigers and Arctotherium bears! And dinosaurs too! Sorry, no table tennis, though George W. Bush makes an appearance.)

Starting next week I have all sorts of group sessions starting up again – lots of programs, including the afterschool program (Mon-Fri), two junior classes, and an adult class.

Also next week – on Tuesday, USATT Historian Tim Boggan once again moves in with me for 12-14 days as we work on his History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 17. (You read that right.) Here's the Tim Boggan Table Tennis page where you can learn about and order any of his first 16 volumes. (I created and maintain the page for him.) We generally work from 7AM to 2:30PM each day, then I'm off for the afterschool program at MDTTC and other coaching. During that time I have to do the blog at night, along with my other table tennis work.

Ringing in the New Year with the 2016 Butterfly NA Tour!
Here's the article. Here are the Four on the Tour:

Ma Long Multiball Training
Here's the new video (68 sec).

Zhang Jike Training 2015
Here's the new video (35:32).

2015 Year in Review
Here’s the new ITTF video (7:14).

Emotional Table Tennis 2015
Here's the new video (2:58). "Take a look back at the emotional moments of 2015!!!"

Best of 2015 Ask a Pro Anything
Here’s the new video (4:12) from Adam Bobrow. Some great stuff here!

Ma Long and Xu Xin Impromptu Exhibition
Here's the video (43 sec) – why not count just how many exhibition tricks they throw in?

Top 10 Table Tennis Trick Shots of 2015 from Pongfinity
Here's the new video (2:44).

Table Tennis Hall of Famer Dean Johnson versus The Pilot Newsroom
Here's the new video (60 sec).

Testing Plastic and Celluloid Balls by Fire
Here's the video (1:48).

Now Serving Ping-Pong
Here's the article and video (1:25) from The Scroll (Idaho).  

Taos Mesa Brewing Starts Weekly Pingpong Tourneys
Here's the article from The Tao News.

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.

Beetle Bailey Table Tennis
Here's a new one, dated May 29, but the year unknown. (Marv Anderson sent it to me.) I've been collecting the Beetle Bailey table tennis cartoons, and there are now 15 of them, all linked from this May 11, 2015 entry.

Dilbert Table Tennis
Here are six Dilbert cartoons that feature table tennis. I'm a huge Dilbert fan!

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