U.S. Training Center Economy

At the recent USATT Board meeting I was asked by Carl Danner, chair of the USATT High Performance Committee, if I'd ever considered just how large the table tennis training center economy is in the U.S. It's a good question.

We're talking about full-time training centers. As recently as 2006 there were only 8-10 in the whole country. Now there are almost 80. A full-time club is very different from a typical club, especially in terms of budget. Your average part-time club gets most of its revenue from membership and perhaps a few tournaments. These numbers are probably dwarfed by the revenue (and expenses) of a full-time club.

I started the Maryland Table Tennis Center (along with Cheng Yinghua and Jack Huang) in 1992. For the first ten years or so I knew everything about the budget. In fact, for most of those years I was the sole owner. But for the last dozen or more years I've stayed out of the finances, and really haven't seen a budget. (I only coach, including a number of group sessions, and do the newsletter, promotional work, and other miscellaneous stuff.) But anyone who observes the activities can make an estimate of the budget of MDTTC or any other training center. So let's do that, and see just how big the table tennis training center economy is in the U.S. I'm only going to look at revenue here and not worry about expenses.

Hodgepodge of Miscellaneous Things

Table Tennis and Schools

I was browsing table tennis forums late last night and found a statement where someone wrote, "I find it funny that some people like Larry Hodges think it's not important to get table tennis in schools in the U.S." (He then went on to briefly argue why we need to get into the schools without explaining how, but I won't get into that here.)

This is NOT what I've argued. I actually blogged about this on January 8, 2013. However, this seems a good topic to blog about again, and timely as well since I'm actually working to develop the sport to the point where we can get into schools.

I'll start by simply reposting my response in the forum to the above statement:

This is NOT what I argue. What I've argued is that schools aren't the first step. The first step is to popularize the sport on our own by developing regional leagues and junior programs (like other sports do and how they do it for table tennis overseas) rather than hoping schools in the U.S. will suddenly get interested in a small sport like us out of the blue. They are only interested in us if we send volunteers for free, and we have no way of doing that except in a few isolated cases. When we grow the sport, that's when the people who run schools will notice us and be interested, and that's when we take that step and spread through schools. I'm not going to get into a debate here [on this forum] about how to popularize the sport U.S. other than to say it's been done all over the world and in other sports in the U.S., and we're not magically different here in the U.S.; we just haven't been going about it the right way. I've blogged about this many times. This might even be a blog topic for tomorrow (or rather, this morning). 

Tip of the Week

How Many Serving Motions Should You Have?

Weekend's Coaching and Arm & Cramp Problems

Well, I did it again - I hurt my arm. I think I did too much looping during a coaching session on Friday so a student could work on blocking. Then on Saturday I did a lot of multiball, and feeding backspin put some strain on the arm. At the end of the session I served to a student for about ten minutes straight, and that's what finally killed the arm. (Advanced serves can put a lot of strain on the arm!) I thought I'd be okay the next day, but on Sunday I quickly discovered it wasn't. I had 3.5 hours of private coaching and 3.0 hours of group sessions scheduled. The group sessions were no problem, but I finally had to hire Derek Nie to do some of my hitting in one session. Even blocking was a problem as it put a strain on the arm reaching for shots. I ended up teaching a lot of serves, pushing, lobbing, and lots of multiball - mostly topspin since feeding backspin hurt the arm.

Since I was on my feet coaching almost continuously all day Sunday, I paid the price - at about midnight, a few minutes after I put aside the book I was reading to go to bed ("Ogi: The Life of Ichiro Ogimura"), my right leg cramped up. It got so bad I had to get up and walk around for ten minutes until it stopped.  

Meanwhile, between cries of pain, I did some coaching over the weekend.

Regional and State Associations, and Team Leagues - Current Status in the U.S.?

Before I get into this, the first thing to remember is that Regional/State Associations and Team Leagues are NOT the goal. They are a MEANS to a goal. The goal is huge numbers of players. By working regionally (as is done in other successful sports in the U.S. and table tennis overseas) and using the team concept (as is done in other successful sports in the U.S. and table tennis overseas - yes, I'm repeating myself on purpose), as well as on developing clubs, training centers, and coaching programs, we hope to achieve this goal. This is not something that'll happen overnight; it's a long process of growing the sport, but if start now and keep at it, imagine where we might be ten years from now?

In other words, we're looking for results. Any process or structure that doesn't lead to results, i.e. the goal of a huge number of players, is a process or structure that isn't working. And of course the processes and structure of USATT since it began in 1933 hasn't led to huge number of players, and so they need to be changed. We need Regional/State Associations to work locally to develop regional team leagues that can grow (like overseas and in other sports), coaching programs and training centers that bring in large number of junior players and others who wish to train, and feature state championships that become huge regional events. 

But before we can do anything, we need to know where we stand. And so my first task as USATT Regional Associations Coordinator and chair of the USATT League Committee is to find the current status of State/Regional associations, and of Team Leagues. (They go together.) It's surprisingly difficult finding info. I plan on doing an article for USATT Insider soon asking members for info they have on these topics. Then I'll likely post the same question on the various table tennis forums.

How the Orioles Help Me Get Work Done

Other than table tennis, I don't really follow too many sports. Locals at MDTTC took great glee recently in quizzing me about the college basketball finals, or whatever that thing that went on recently, and laughing at my utter ignorance of who the "Final Four" were, or that it was even going on. I claim similar ignorance of NBA, NFL, NHL, and most other sports. (When quizzed, I was only able to name three current NBA players, though with time I guarantee you I could have come up with two or three more . . . at most.) I do follow tennis a bit. (I'm a former member of the U.S. Tennis Association, and went to group training sessions twice a week for years as my "side" sport.) But I do have one sport I follow, and that's Baltimore Orioles baseball. I've been a fan since I was a kid.

As readers might know, I've coached three of them at MDTTC - Darren O'Day, JJ Hardy, and Brady Anderson - and visited their clubhouse in 2013 with our top juniors to take on their players for three hours. (Here's my blog about it, and here's a group picture. It was surreal discussing topics like talent and training with Chris Davis and others, hitting with many of the players, and meeting them all.) I also write humorous articles about the Orioles, with 27 articles published in Orioles Hangout.

Normally I do my blog in the morning, but I run into problems doing that during our training camps, which take place all summer as well as in our spring break camp (going on right now). I'd have to get up extremely early to get the blog done before leaving to coach at these camps. So what's my solution?

Never Rile Up a Potential Rival

Here are two times where I inadvertently broke this rule and paid for it. In theory, a riled-up opponent should be emotional and thereby play poorly. In reality, at the higher levels in sports, when you rile up a player they just get more focused. Here are the two examples.

Tip of the Week

Tiger Woods Distraction Drill.

Regional Associations Coordinator and Election Petition Bylaw

Here's the USATT News Item on these two items, "USATT Appoints Hodges Regional Associations Coordinator." This is an unpaid volunteer position. It will put me in a position to work on several things I promised to do when I ran for the board - create state and regional associations; promote coaching programs and training centers; and set up a nationwide network of team leagues. They all go together.

Or to quote me from the article:

"I have long believed that a strong system of regional and state associations are necessary for the growth and development of the sport in the United States. With the sheer geographical size and diversity of our country, regional and state associations allow us to develop programming at a more local level. Central to this will be creating state championships, coaching programs and training centers, and regional team leagues."

Right now I'm in the learning and planning phrase. Also, we're in the middle of the MDTTC Spring Break Camp, and so I'm pretty busy coaching there, though I might get one of the other coaches to sub for me so I can work on these issues. But I've already done a lot of planning and will be going public with some of this later. (Much of the implementation will start in the fall and in 2016.) One difficulty is that I will be coaching long hours during the summer due to our training camps, and so won't be as active during that time. On the other hand, it is a volunteer position! (Maybe if they double my salary, I'd do more? Oh wait…)

Shortened Blog Today

We're running our Spring Break Camp at MDTTC this week, Mon-Fri, with local schools closed, so just local kids. I thought I was off this morning - we have eight full-time coaches and several part-time ones - but I've been called in at the last minute. I've put together the segments below, but haven't done my own blog yet, or finished the Tip of the Week, which will go up tomorrow. But I think there's plenty below to keep you occupied! I'll start earlier the rest of this week, or work on it the night before.

Disabled Veterans Camp

I'm running another four-day camp, May 18-21, at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Here's info! They are free to veterans with disabilities and members of the armed forces with disabilities. (I also ran one last August.)

World Table Tennis Day

Here's the ITTF Press Release. It's today!!!

Capital Super League

Here's the report on the latest matches this Washington DC area team league. All teams have now played. And there were some nice games and nice shots - see next segment on Derek's shot!

Derek Nie's Around-the-Net Backhand Loop Receive

Here's the video of this shot from league matches this past weekend! (The link should take you directly to 14:20 into the match, when Allen Lin is serving, with no idea what's in store for him!)

Backhand Topspin - Like a Boss!

Here's the new coaching video (5:45) from Brett Clarke.

No Blog on Friday

Why? Because:

1. It's Good Friday.
2. Everyone else is off work, so why not me?
3. We have a one-day camp at MDTTC.
4. I'm working on several big projects.
5. I need to take my car to the shop in the morning for some minor repairs that I've put off for a long time.

European vs. USA Question

In the U.S., the first thing a player is often asked at a club is, "What's your rating?" But in Europe it's different. Stefano Ratti emailed me the following  after he recently visited his brother in the Netherlands and played a tournament there. Note that 18,000 players in the Netherlands equates to about 340,000 in the U.S.! (Stefano has been instrumental in helping set up the Capital Area Super League.)

I spoke to a number of local players (remarkably few people of Asian origins, compared to the U.S. TT population) and it was very interesting to see how the team leagues are the backbone of the sport. If you ask somebody what level they are, their answer is “I play in Division x for xyz team”, not “my rating is X”. They seed players based on their percentages in the team league, which basically puts players in a certain “class” – for example, if you play in the National Division 2 and have a 60% win percentage, you may be considered class B.  There appears to be a rating number (again, calculated ONLY on the basis of team league matches), but it is not widely used (my brother was barely aware of its existence).  Also, tournaments don’t seem to count towards any sort of rating (the opposite of what we have here!).  They have 4 National league divisions, and 7 regional league divisions. If I get my numbers straight, there are about 16 million people in the Netherlands and 18,000 registered players (I am one of them now!).