58 and Jörg
That sounds like an address doesn't it? "Taxi, take me to the table tennis club at 58 and Jörg." Actually, it's two things.

First, today I'm turning 58. How did that happen??? To mourn celebrate I was going to take the day off from blogging, but I decided the last thing I wanted on my birthday was for legions of USATT members storming my house with pitchforks and torches. So instead I'll celebrate by going to the doctor at 1PM today to go over the results of the MRI on my shoulder on Friday, find out if I have a rotator cuff tear, and whether I'll be out for weeks or months. (I'll put in a small "Breaking News" item here when I get back.)

Second, USATT High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio was at MDTTC yesterday afternoon where he watched some of our top kids in training, and even worked with a couple. (One had a tendency to play backhands with his right foot in front, so Jörg put a wire cord on the floor in front of him and had him play backhands while keeping the foot behind the cord.) Afterwards we went out to dinner, along with Wen Hsu (one of the MDTTC directors and a member of the USATT High Performance Committee) and MDTTC Coach Wang Qing Liang, one of the National Team Coaches. We solved all of USATT's problems, and were well into denuclearizing North Korea and installing a truth detector in the White House when we ran out of Chinese food.

As to the shoulder, I'm meeting with a physical therapist three times a week for an hour, plus I'm supposed to do about 15 minutes of shoulder stretches three times a day.

Tip of the Week
Sound and Feet.

Friday Twos
Friday was a red-letter day for me for multiple reasons, and they all came in twos.

I had to do two "bad" things - I had my shoulder MRI, and I did my taxes. I meet with my doctor Twosday (smirk) at 1PM to go over the MRI results and find out if I have a torn rotator cuff - i.e. will I be out for weeks or months. (I'm already scheduled for physical therapy three times per week, one hour each time. I have session #2 today at 11AM.) Here's what an MRI machine looks like - I was in it for 30 minutes with my shoulder strapped down to immobilize it. As to taxes, someone's got to pay for Trump's golf outings. These two bad things happened on Friday the 23rd, where of course the two is all that keeps it from being Friday the 13th.

I finalized the entry form for the Maryland State Championships (June 2-3) and ordered 32 (two to the fifth) plaques - the latter is time consuming as you have to type in the text for each one, and each plaque has two lines. And then, after some emails, I had to start over with changes in events and time scheduling, and had to cancel the plaque order. Later today I will for the second time finalize the entry form (including events and scheduling), and for the second time order the plaques.

After hitting an even 200 pounds on Christmas, on Friday I hit 182 pounds. I've held steady since then, but expect to hit 180 within a week.

NOTE - off to do MRI on my shoulder Friday morning, so no blog that that morning. (See my Wednesday blog on this.) Wish me luck!

Help Fund Coaches to the Nationals for These Top Juniors!
The HW Global Foundation, which runs the Talent Junior Program at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, is trying to raise money to send coaches for the many kids they will be sending to the USA Nationals in July. In their words:

"We're raising $15,500 to bring the coaches that work with the kids all year to the tournament to ensure that our young athletes have the support they need to succeed in the sport they love. They will create a training camp for the kids before the tournament and coach them during the tournament."

Want to help out? Here is their GoFundMe page. There are 26 kids in the program, and I'm guessing that well over half will go to the Nationals. They are a great group to work with, and they are getting very good. (As of Dec. 31, 2017, they had 6 of the top 14 players in 10 and under boys in the U.S.) Disclaimer: I likely will be one of the coaches. (I'm in one of the pictures on the page, and think I'm just off-camera in another.) I work with them on Sundays, and coached two of their teams at the 2017 North American Teams. Over half of them started in my beginning table tennis classes.

Why should you help these kids get coaching? I'll let the page speak for itself.

Shoulder Shenanigans and Other Maladies
Yesterday I finally went to see an orthopedic doctor about my shoulder. As I've blogged, I began having shoulder problems in October or November, but it was just a repeat of past problems. At the U.S. Open in December I tore it badly while moving wide to the forehand for a big smash, and had to default out immediately. Because I'd injured it before, I thought I knew how to rehab it, and so took a month off from coaching and did various exercises with these giant resistance rubber bands.

I started coaching again in mid-January, but the shoulder was only (in my estimation) 80% healed. I've been careful not to aggravate it by extending my arm out or reaching upwards too much, but occasionally a student would put a ball wide or short to my forehand and I'd mistakenly reach out for it - ow! Anyway, the shoulder seemed to get worse, so I finally saw the doctor yesterday. (How bad is it? When I comb my hair I have to use my left arm to hold up my right arm.) 

They did x-rays, and he ran some tests, and I have an MRI on Friday morning. (I might not be able to blog that morning.) So the final diagnosis will have to wait until then - it could be a rotator cuff injury. But he said I have a "shoulder impingement," which means "tendons of the rotator cuff muscles become irritated and inflamed as they pass through the subacromial space, the passage beneath the acromion. This can result in pain, weakness and loss of movement at the shoulder." He was amazed at my lack of shoulder mobility. I haven't been able to touch my back with my right arm for many months, and it's been years since I could do so without first doing a lot of warm-up and/or stretching. I also can't raise my right arm straight up in the air. The left arm is perfectly normal, so the contrast is startling.

Tip of the Week
Forehands and Backhands: 1-2-3, not 1-2.

USA Team Selections
On Friday I spent much of the day studying the USATT Team Selection Process. (I blogged about this on Friday morning - somewhat jokingly though it's a serious matter.) There's a lot of nuance to this. For example, I often read complaints about how the teams are selected, but without distinguishing between how players are selected to be on the National Team (now called "TTTeam USA"), as opposed to who is selected to play at specific events, such as (for juniors) the World Junior Championships, Pan Am Junior Championships, or various ITTF junior tournaments. So there are really things involved in Team Selection - these two (who is on National Team, who plays in which events), plus the selection of coaches.

There's also the question of how much should be done by Trials, and how much by Selection. Many instinctively want it to be all Trials, until it's pointed out that due to injury, illness, or just having a bad day, the best player might not make the team, and then he's out for an entire year. So most agree that the High Performance Director (HPD), the High Performance Committee (HPC), or the National Team Coaches should be able to add perhaps one or two players. But then we start listening to the HPD and the HPC and they point out how a Team Trials isn't always realistic - it favors those who are good against other U.S. players that they are familiar with, it's a one-shot process that favors whoever is hot that day, and it leaves out players with great potential that are developing their game for the long term, while favoring those who play for the short term.

Plus, of course, who makes all these decisions, the HPD, the HPC, or the National Coaches?

President's Day
It's President's Day, the day we all celebrate all of our great presidents and try to forget the bad ones. (Or perhaps mock them.) It's a federal holiday, so I'm off today - though I'll be spending most of the day on a writing project. Meanwhile, to tide you over until tomorrow, here's the best 21-second rally in history - the Maggie intro scene from Balls of Fury. 

UTZ Day
Yes, it's Usa Team Zelection (UTZ*) Day, the day I start looking into how USATT chooses its National Teams. I blogged about this on January 22 blog, where I wrote, "However, right now I'm just too busy to look into it too much, but I plan to do so in February, probably after I run the MDTTC February Open (Feb. 10-11)."
[*Our High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio and our long-time National Men's Coach Stefan Feth are both German, and in really bad movies the Germans always pronounce "S" words with a Z, so I'm going with "Zelection" here. And I'm suddenly craving potato chips. Yeah, it looks more like a Pringles, but close enough.]

USATT Teleconference
We had a USA Table Tennis Board of Directors teleconference on Monday night, 7:00-8:31PM. Attending were all nine board members (including me), plus the CEO, the COO, the HPD, and the S&LC. (Give up on this alphabet soup? The first three are listed on the USATT Staff Page, the third is the Secretary and Legal Counsel, Dennis Taylor.) I'm guessing that I spoke less in this meeting than any past meeting, probably by several magnitudes. However, before the meeting I did do a number of edits to the minutes of the December 2017 meeting - once an editor, always an editor.

First on the agenda was the approval of the minutes of the December two-day board meeting in Las Vegas during the U.S. Open, and the January teleconference minutes. After some discussion, they were both approved - I made the motions. They are now both online for your reading pleasure in the USATT Minutes and Actions page.

Then came reports on SafeSport. We have lost almost 1/3 of our clubs due to this - from 263 to the current 183, though we expect a number of others to soon become SafeSport compliant - we'll almost for sure get back over 200. I blogged about this on February 2 when we were down to only 138 clubs (see second segment). The good news is the USOC sent us a note saying they were happy with our SafeSport compliance. They had given us some recommendations, which USATT had implemented. They wrote, "The review found that the recommendations were implemented and are considered closed. USATT was prompt to implement the recommendations in the SafeSport audit." Now if we can just get most of those 82 non-compliant clubs! (And yes, it's a big hassle that I wasn't happy about either.)

Tip of the Week
Focus on Performance and Fun to Maximize Your Chances of Winning.

$2700 3-Star Butterfly MDTTC February Open
February 10-11, 2018 • Maryland Table Tennis Center • Gaithersburg, MD
[Here's my write-up of the tournament I ran this past weekend. If not interested, then as usual skip ahead to the many segments afterwards!]

Top-seeded Wu Junhan from New Jersey, rated 2691 (but over 2750 most of last year, with a high of 2788), cruised into the final without losing a game, or even going deuce. As someone on the sidelines said, "He makes it look so easy." Yes he does, but that's why he's 2700. How many players that level make it look hard? Well, maybe Chen Alex Ruichao, the other Open finalist, who goes after every shot in ways that do not look so easy. (Here's a nice picture of the final.)

Alex was also over 2700 for a number of months the last three years, with a high of 2722 before dropping to a likely temporary 2615. The lefty Alex may have the best pure serve and forehand rip game in North America, and you could see much of the match came down to Wu trying to stop that, and when Wu serves, trying to stop Alex from counter-ripping winners. It wasn't easy - here's video of the shot of the Tournament (46 sec, video by Mossa Barandao of PongMobile) - Chen Ruichao's lunging, down-the-line counter-smash in the Open Final against Wu - at 12-all!

Three Coaches Moving In Downstairs
The three MDTTC coaches are moving into my townhouse this morning, and I'm helping them, and doing last-minute clean-ups and fixes. Has there ever been a higher-rated group of movers? Chen Alex Ruichao, Wang Qingliang, Wu Jiacheng, Cheng Yinghua, and Jack Huang? The first three are renting the first two floors of the townhouse I own; I live on the third floor. I'm compiling a list of damages downstairs - the people before left much of it a mess, with everything from damaged windows to broken drawers, so I'm calling a handyman probably today to fix things. So no blog today. Back tomorrow, likely with an aching back. 

Addendum, added Tuesday afternoon: Here's the Tip of the Week, Focus on Performance and Fun to Maximize Your Chances of Winning. (This will go up in tomorrow's blog as well.)