April 7, 2016

Table Tennis Players Who Are Very Good in Other Sports
There are a number of table tennis players who also excel in other sports. What follows is NOT a comprehensive list – it's a list of ones that I know of and remember this morning. To do a more comprehensive listing would take some real investigative work, and I'll leave that to the real investigators – you, the readers – so comment below your own nominations. (I know I'm leaving out some obvious ones.) Probably the three best all-around athletes in USATT's modern history were Dan Seemiller, Brian Pace, and Brian Masters.

  • Golf. There are many top golfers in table tennis – we might as well call ourselves USATT&G. International Referee Ray Cavicchio is a professional golf instructor. The Seemillers (Dan, Rick, Randy) and Sweeris's (Dell, Connie, Todd) are all top golfers. So is Scott Preiss. (Isn't he good at bowling as well?) My apologies to the myriads of others – I just don't remember or know of all of them – so nominate others below.
  • Tennis. Brian Masters (1983 Pan Am Men's Singles Gold Medalist and long-time member of USA Men's Team) was the Maryland 12 & under tennis champion. Barry Dattel, Corey Eider, and Ty Hoff are all top tennis players. Carl Danner is very good. (I played tennis on the side myself for many years, reached a 4.0 level, which some say is about 1800 in table tennis.)
  • Baseball. Dan Seemiller was offered a minor league contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates, but decided to give that table tennis thing one more year. James Therriault coaches both table tennis and baseball professionally. Brian Masters was a little league baseball star (league MVP). When I was a kid I could recite every baseball world series champion and runner-up, the scores of every game, the winning and losing pitchers, as well as the entire Orioles roster and all their major stats. But I couldn't hit. (But I could draw walks and hook slide!)
  • Basketball. 14-year-old Sameer Shaikh, a table tennis student of mine, is on his middle school basketball team. We've had many good basketball players in table tennis, from Jim Butler to Nathan Hsu. (I once coached a 6'10" college basketball player from beginner to 1500.) One great memory – in 1987 the members of the resident table tennis program at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs – all ages 14-17 – challenged the USA Tae Kwon Do Men's Team to a basketball game. Their shortest player was taller than our tallest player! With me as honorary coach – I know little about basketball – our sharp-shooting and quick rebounding team of Todd Sweeris, Chi-Sun Chui, Dhiren Narotam, Anthony Cooper, and Chi Phong Ngo beat them!
  • Football. Dan Seemiller was also a star high school football player, and had a football scholarship offer before deciding to go with table tennis. I think he was a running back. (If Brian Pace had played football, watch out!)
  • Soccer. Brian Masters was league MVP at age 12. Former Yugoslavian and Canadian table tennis star Zoran Kosanovic was a soccer star.
  • Badminton. Until he was 12 years old, Cheng Yinghua was training full-time in both table tennis and badminton, and was a province badminton champion. When the U.S. badminton championships were held at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in the late 1980s, where we had a resident program for table tennis, with Cheng as a coach/practice partner, he stopped by the tournament and was recognized by a number of players. I always thought I was pretty good at badminton, but I played Cheng once, and it was a different world.
  • Cycling. Brian Pace does both table tennis and cycling professionally. Here's his home page, Pace Cycling Training. When I googled his name and cycling, I found this results page for him.
  • Lacrosse. Brian Masters was on his college lacrosse team. Brian was great at all sports – at the age of 12 he not only was the Maryland 12 & under tennis champion, he was the league MVP in little league baseball and soccer, and I think (not sure) basketball as well.
  • Shooting. Former junior champion Sunny Li was a sharpshooter in Iraq for the U.S. military. (His dad, Alex Li, who also played a little TT, was a pool champion.)
  • Sprinter. Here's Brian Pace, again. He was on his high school track and field team for the 100 and 200 meter sprints. Former senior table tennis star Bill Sharpe was a three-time Olympian in the triple jump, and won the gold medal for that at the 1963 Pan Am Games.
  • Distance Running. I was a miler on my high school track team and ran a marathon – but this was 40 years ago!
  • Arm Wrestling. Here's a picture of me winning the University of Maryland Under 170 pound weight class in 1983 over the defending champion! (Outside table tennis, I've actually coached arm wrestling, baseball, boxing, tennis, and distance running, but not professionally.)
  • Disc Golf. Pete May is a senior champion. Here's one of many articles.
  • Martial Arts. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of martial arts experts in table tennis, but offhand I can't think of many. I think Tom Nguyen is a black belt in karate or Tae Kwon Do.
  • Chess, Go, Poker. Do these count? One of my students, 9-year-old Bradley Guo, is the top-ranked under 10 player in Maryland and one of the best of his age in the country. Another player I coached, Tong Tong Gong, used to travel to chess tournaments, and played in the U.S. National Chess Championships (I think in Ohio). I believe John Tannehill was pretty good. Cheng Yinghua is apparently very good at Go. Tom McEvoy was world poker champion.

MDTTC April Open
I'm running the MDTTC April Open on Saturday. Yippee! You can enter until 5PM on Friday. There is a link that allows you to enter online. Some have reported problems with paying online; if that happens, just enter and pay on arrival.

Serve Practice
Speaking of tournaments, have you practiced your serves recently? No? Oh – you want to lose? Here's my article, Practicing Serves the Productive Way.

Back Problems
Due to back problems, I had to cancel, reschedule, or get subs for all of my private coaching on Tue, Wed, and Thur (today). I'm still doing multiball and light hitting with beginners in our afterschool program, but need to rest the back. I run the MDTTC April Open on Saturday and then return to normal coaching on Sunday.

NYTTL 2016 Open Meeting
Here's the meeting notice of the New York TT League. The meeting is on Sunday, April 17, at NYISC, at 1:30 PM. Here's the home page for the NYTTL (which is run by Mauricio Vergara) – lots of nice videos posted there.

World Table Tennis Day
Here are three WTTD videos, which was yesterday.

2016 ITTF North America Olympic Qualification Tournament Live Stream
Here's the USATT page for that, starting on Friday.

Jan-Ove Waldner Impossible
On Tuesday I blogged about this point (66 sec, including slo-mo replay), of Waldner doing your typical run-from-the-table, leap-in-air over-the-shoulder no-look lob winner. That's Jean-Michel Saive on far side. Bernard Lemal emailed me that the point was in the match for 3rd place at the 1991 World Men's Cup, with Waldner leading 18-9 in the third (best of three); he'd win a few points later. (The final was Persson over Gatien.) He also pointed out that though you can't see it clearly, Saive actually won the point by pushing the ball back, with Waldner stuck on the other side of the barriers. Here's the full match (13:11).

Spider-Man and Darth Vader as Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong
Here's the picture!

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