January 17, 2011

Let the ticker-tape parades begin - TableTennisCoaching.com is here!

So here it is, TableTennisCoaching.com. What exactly is it? Someone wrote on the home page that it is "Your Worldwide Center for Table Tennis Coaching." Um, I wrote that, so I better explain.

TableTennisCoaching.com is both a table tennis coaching site and a developing table tennis community. It's a place where players and coaches get together. A place to find coaching articles, books, and videos. A place to find other coaching sites and training camps. A place to discuss all aspects of table tennis, both on the forum, and in comments to my blog and the Tip of the Week. Plus, starting soon, the weekly chats with "celebrity" coaches and players.

So here's my question to you: How can TableTennisCoaching.com best help you? The comment section is below - comment away! My ears are already burning. (And because I notice that the "preview" portion of the blog ends here, let me point out that there's more - if it seems to end here, click on the "Read more" button!)

The blog will cover all aspects of table tennis, focusing mostly on the coaching side. I know I'm going to blog on the doings (and non-doings) of USA Table Tennis, and those could easily become heated discussions - but let's keep the temperature down and the reasonableness and courtesy up.

Coaching News

  • Congrats to Coach Lily Yip, who recently opened the Lily Yip Table Tennis Center, a 15,000-foot, 24-table full-time facility in Dunellen, New Jersey! Lily's a long-time full-time coach, and a former USA National and Olympic Team Member. They've already held their first camp there. I plan to visit at some point. At the Nationals, I discussed with Lily the idea of holding a USATT or ITTF camp there for top USA Cadets and Juniors. I'd like to bring a coalition of Maryland juniors there to train with their peers from around the country.
  • ICC Table Tennis recently hired Massimo Costantinias as their new head coach. Costantini was the former head coach for the Italian National Team and a member of the Italian National Team for an amazing 23 years. He joins Director/Coach Rajul Sheth, full-time coaches Opendro Singh, Kashyap Anal, Hailong Shen, Meng Tien, and Gidla Jitendra, and a number of part-time coaches. The full-time center, with about 18 tables, has become a force in USA Table Tennis the last few years, especially on the junior girls' side. It's getting scary out there!
  • Maryland Table Tennis Center recently brought in Zeng "Jeffrey" Xun as their newest coach, joining Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Larry Hodges (hey, that's me!), and Vahid Mosafari. Jeffrey's a former member of the Chinese Sichuan Province Team, and just spent a year coaching full-time in Vancouver, Canada. He played in the U.S. Open and the North American Teams, and despite no longer training as a player, achieved a rating of 2583. (Imagine when he was in practice!)
  • Coach Donn Olsen, who coached at Club JOOLA in Maryland the last few years, has accepted a full-time coaching position at the Werner Schlager Academy in Austria. (The site is in German, but you can read the Jan. 14, 2011 ITTF article about it in English. Werner Schlager of Austria, for you newbies, is the 2003 World Men's Singles Champion.) He's already over there, and wrote me the following tidbits (with my notes in brackets): "It's fun watching [former Chinese Team Member] Chen Weixing train and play matches against Werner. Werner left mid-week for a league match in France. [Romania's] Daniela Dodean was here late last week, chatting about her league match in Germany against [Hungary's] Georgina Pota. Peter-Paul Pradeeban [Canadian Team Member] was here for a day earlier in the week to do some training as he plays in the leagues here. Karl Jindrik, Werner's long-time doubles partner, now working for the ITTF, works out of the ITTF office here in the facility; dropped by yesterday also."

Send me your own coaching news!