January 21, 2016

A Blizzard is Coming, a Blizzard is Coming!
Yes, it's true. By Friday night we'll be blanketed in snow, with predictions varying from 12 to 30 inches. This could be historic here in the Maryland/DC area. (It'll also dump huge snowfalls along the entire northeast.) The record snowfall for DC is 28" in 1922. The only other time we got over 20 inches was 20.5" in 1899. We had the infamous "Snowmaggedon" of 2010, but that was only 17.8", only the fourth deepest ever. (What made that extreme is that it fell on Feb. 5-6, and on Feb. 9-10, we had another 10.8" inches fall, so 28.6" total – more than the 1922 storm, which lasted three days.) Here's a listing of the 25 Biggest DC Snowfalls.

I'm sure some of you people up north are snickering at us. But you have to remember it's all relative. If you get four feet of snow, but are prepared for four feet of snow, with lots and lots of snow equipment and supplies, it's not a big deal. If you get six inches of snow and are completely unprepared for it – as Maryland and DC are, since it happens less frequently – it's a lot worse. During Snowmaggedon, schools closed for two weeks. (Stop snickering!!!)

Here some memorable table tennis snow experiences.

  • Around 1977 I went to the U.S. Open Team Championships in Detroit in a car with Jim Mossberg and a couple others. There was a heavy snowfall on Sunday night, and we finally had to check into a hotel. If I remember correctly, we had to spend two nights there, returning home to Maryland on Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) night. That was a mess!
  • In January, 1996, we had 17.1" of snow – fifth most ever, see listing above. At the time I was the sole owner of the Maryland Table Tennis Center (which had opened in 1992), meaning I was responsible for all its finances. (We're about 15 miles north of DC.) The club basically closed for two weeks, and business was pretty much dead for a month. With no income but all sorts of bills, I had great financial difficulties. This was the primary reason that at some point after that I got a group together to be joint owners. It wasn't that the club was losing money so much as there were such financial fluctuations that I decided it was getting a bit too risky for me alone, since I didn't have a large financial reserve.
  • A few years ago we had a snowfall just before the U.S. Nationals, and all our flights from Maryland to Las Vegas were cancelled. Fortunately, at my suggestions, most of us had reserved flights a day early so we'd get an extra day of practice there, and we were able to catch flights the next day and still make the tournament.
  • This isn't exactly table tennis related, but during Snowmaggedon, my dog, Sheeba, a small corgi mix, had great fun tunneling through the snow. She literally would run excitedly about underneath the surface, so you could see the top billowing out like a mole tunneling in the ground, and every ten feet or so she'd leap into the air, breaking the snow's surface, and then she'd go back to running about underneath. (Alas, she died last year at age 16.)

Here are some pictures of Snow Table Tennis!

Table Tennis Training - Jan Ove WALDNER

Ask the Coach Show
Episode 210 (28:11) – Men v. Women (and other segments).

USATT Insider
Here's the latest issue, which went out Wednesday morning.

Kanak Jha Interview
Here's the interview (2:09) by Barbara Wei.

Angela Guan Interview
Here's the interview (2:14) by Barbara Wei.

GTN's "This is Greensboro" - Olympic Table Tennis
Here's the video (9:30) on the upcoming U.S. Olympic Trials.

Table Tennis Racket for an Arm
Here's the video (70 sec).

Great Point
Here's the video (16 sec) between Kristian Karlsson and Jesus Cantero.

Multiball?
Here's the picture!

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