January 20, 2016
MDTTC Tournament Director
Well, I've gone and done it; I'm back to being the tournament director at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. I keep saying I have way too much to do, and now I've got more. I'll be running five tournaments at MDTTC this year, four regular ones plus a Maryland State Championships. The regular ones will be held on April 9, June 11, Sept. 10, and Oct. 22, all on Saturdays. Entry form will be posted soon.
I'll be running them using Omnipong, which works really well. I used that software when I ran MDTTC tournaments a few years ago, I think in 2012, before Charlene Liu took over. She's now running the full-time Washington DC Table Tennis Center, and so someone had to take over the tournaments. (Immediately all eyes turned to me, alas.)
I'm not exactly new to running tournaments. I've run about 150 USATT sanctioned tournaments, including monthly ones at MDTTC through much of the 1990s. I also ran the 4-star 1998 Eastern Open, and dozens of other tournaments, dating back to monthly ones I ran at the Northern Virginia TTC in the early 1980s.
Surprisingly, it's not a big conflict with my coaching, as Saturdays (surprisingly) is not a busy day for me, where I usually only have one or two students. For me, the bigger problem is that by Saturdays, I'm tired from coaching and other work all week, and then I have to run the tournament – and that's exhausting. And then it's Sunday, which is my busiest day. And then comes Monday, where I've got a full weekend's worth of stuff to write about in my blog, plus the Tip of the Week, plus my science fiction blog, plus whatever else I've put off while setting up and running the tournament.
There's some conflict as I won't be able to coach students in the tournament. But I can't coach them in about half of them anyway since I don't like to coach against MDTTC members.
So bottom line – enter my tournaments, and have a great time – but if you contact me on the Monday afterwards with something for me to do, don't be surprised if a gigantic ping-pong ball flattens your house that day.
Draws for 2016 World Team Championships
Here's the home page with links to the draws (on right). Here's the ITTF article on them. USA Women are in Division One, Group D (along with Hong Kong, Korea Republic, Austria, Russia, and Sweden). USA Men are in Division Three, Group J (along with Scotland, Algeria, Luxembourg, Guatemala, and Cyprus).
Table Tennis Training - Wang Hao
Here's the video (44:49).
Matt Hetherington's Training Diary
See his home page - he's up to Day 9 as he trains for the Worlds.
Butterfly Selected as New Official Apparel Partner of USATT
Here's the USATT article. That's convenient for me since I'm sponsored by Butterfly. Can't wait to get some of the new stuff with "USA" on the back!
Capital Area League
The Capital Area League had their latest meetup this past weekend. (This is for players in the Maryland/Virginia/DC area.) I've put the results up – see links for Division One and Division Two results, and the Schedule and Standings links.
11 Questions with Doug Wruck
ITTF World Tour Celebrates 20th Birthday
Here's the ITTF article.
Off the Table - Yang Haeun
Here's the ITTF video (4:04). Here's the accompanying ITTF article on her. She's Korean (world #17, #12 back in June), but teamed with Xu Xin of China to win Mixed Doubles at the World Championships.
Xu Xin - Ma Long Sleeping on the Job
Here's the video (19 sec) – sleeping on the tables?
Bench Table Tennis
Here's the video (48 sec). Table Tennis can be played everywhere!!!
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