March 28, 2018

MDTTC Spring Break Camp, Day Two
I focused on basics in my group today - forehands, backhands, footwork, and serves. The strokes are coming along nicely. One girl "invented" a heavy topspin serve, with almost a looping contact - she did this on her own, I hadn't even taught her yet about the different spins or what a loop was. She was so excited about it I didn't have the heart to tell her that she hadn't invented the serve. Others in the group had difficulty returning it, and so were trying to copy the serve.

It was interesting contrasting two players and their forehands. One had a tendency to take a short, quick stroke, and hit the ball on the rise with a jerky, almost slap-like stroke. The other tended to take a long, wandering backswing, with a flapping wrist, and hit the ball late with a very flat contact. Both improved as the session went on, but the two shots were such extremes I told them that, on average, they had perfect forehands. 

We did the ten-cup challenge, where I stacked ten cups into a vertical pyramid (four on bottom, then three, two, and one on top), and with me feeding multiball, each got ten shots to see how many they could knock down. In the first round, two knocked over seven, three got six. The second time around, three got seven, but the last player got eight - or as I put it, no one had ever gotten that many in billions of years, not on that table on that morning.

Someday I'm going to figure out if, to the kids, I'm a towering pillar of ping-pong wisdom, or just that guy who gives them Jolly Ranchers (candy) and my smart phone to play with during breaks. Hmmmm….

Table Tennis Tidbits #21
Ramen in Slovenia and Australia, but Lo Mein in Japan, by Robert Ho.

US Sister Duo Combine for Pair of Medals in Italy
Here's the article by Matt Hetherington.

Calderano a Beacon of Light for Latin America
Here's the USATT article by Ray Huang.

ITTF CEO Steve Dainton Talks 2018 Plans
Here's the ITTF article.

Double Skipping Challenge to Table Tennis Players
Here's the video (48 sec). 

Fan Pong
Here's the cartoon!

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