March 30, 2018

NOTE - no blog on Monday - power will be out from 7AM-5PM for electrical repairs, plus local schools are closed for Easter holiday, and so I'm off too. 

Upcoming USATT Stuff
As usual, there's all sorts of time-consuming USATT stuff going on behind the scenes. I get a double-whammy because I'm both on the USATT Board of Directors and chair the USATT Coaching Committee, both unpaid volunteer positions. (I'm probably going to have to drop one of them next year - just too much.) A lot of it is email correspondence. Fortunately, I'm a writer, so emailing is a strength. But then you add all the local volunteers stuff (such as the monthly MDTTC newsletter I'll be working on today), and then add in all the actual paid stuff, and I'm pretty busy. 

This past year there's also been a major headache with one individual who believes there's a huge conspiracy against him, and has lodged numerous complaints - a total of 64 (!!!), to be exact - against about 20 USATT people with both the USATT and the ITTF Ethics Committees, with one big filing to each containing the complaints. (I'll give a full report on this later on, when all the complaints have been dealt with by the two committees, hopefully within a month or two.) I've already spent about 90 hours now on this person's "issues," over and over finding his charges to be false and often made up. (Most are easily proved false, but it takes time to do so each time.) And now I've had to spend more time on him again, since I'm named in both of these "Complaints." I ended up writing a response to each, one 10 pages, the other 13. I really, Really, REALLY am looking forward to going public with all this, and then never having to deal with this time-wasting person again. The USATT Board has spent more time this past year on this one person than the rest of the membership combined. If you ever wonder why USATT doesn't get more done, this will be Exhibit A. (We do need to find a better balance where we never let one person waste so much of our time like this again while not taking away USATT members' rights to file grievances. We don't want to take the latter away, but we also don't want one person to be able to highjack USATT's time like this ever again.)

The Event Listing for the upcoming USA Nationals in Las Vegas (July 2-7) came out this morning. The entry form for the Nationals should be out soon, hopefully next week. I haven't asked why it's been held up, but my best guess is, well, see what I wrote above. I'll post here as soon as it's up. 

There most likely will be a USATT board meeting during the World Veterans Championships in Las Vegas, which is June 18-24. The meeting will most likely take place on Wednesday, June 20, which is sort of an "off" day. The membership is welcome to attend, except when we go into "executive session" to discuss legal and personnel issues. (We also have USATT teleconferences on March 12 and April 9.) 

I will be attending both the World Veterans (where I'll primarily be doing daily coverage) and the USA Nationals (where I'll primarily be coaching). I'm entered in singles in the Veterans, but because of my shoulder problems I'll likely drop out. For that reason I'm also not playing doubles - three people have asked me, but I've had to say no. I haven't done any private coaching in a month, though I've done a number of group sessions and fed a lot of multiball. Tentatively I might try some private coaching next weekend - we'll see. But I can feel that the shoulder still hasn't healed. Dang. 

The Veterans are June 18-24, the Nationals July 2-7, so I'll have about a week in between where I plan on taking a reading and writing vacation right there in Las Vegas. I'll likely run a USATT coaching seminar on July 1, which is a Sunday. I might also help out with some training sessions at the playing site just before the Nationals. 

Have You Practiced Your Serves Recently?
Well why the heck not? Get to it!!! Here's Practicing Serves the Productive Way.

Tentative Event Schedule Released for 2018 US National Championships
Here's the USATT listing.

Spanish Open
Here's the ITTF home page for the event, March 28-April 1, in Guadalajara, Spain. The first two days were preliminaries; the main draws start today. Articles, results, pictures, and video.

2018 Butterfly Cary Cup Championship: Photo, Results & Live Stream
Here's the home page for all this. You can also see the results when they go up on Omnipong. (Thursday results are already up.)

Chinese Table Tennis College in Shanghai, Home for Youth Olympic Games Training Camp
Here's the ITTF article.

Insane Rally
Here's the video (26 sec)!

Just Your Basic Inside-Out Falling-Back Forehand Sidespin Countersmash
Here's the video (19 sec, including slo-mo) by Adam Bobrow. Why does Adam get so many videos like this? Because 1) he goes for lots of "crazy" shots, and 2) he videotapes them, and 3) he puts them online. Why don't you?

Ping-Pong Ball Math
Here's the video (52 sec).

Multiplication Math Ping Pong - Commutative Property Math Videos
Here's the video (3:17).

Skeleton Pong

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