First USATT Super Camp Heads to Triode Media and Into Week 2!
(Courtesy of Larry Hodges) Today was an "off" day, with no table tennis training as they rested from a week of training and the tournament on Saturday. Instead, an even 30 of us made the trip to Lancaster, PA, 2.5 hours away, where Peter Scudner (chair of the USATT Board of Directors) and his son Evan Scudner, and the staff at the Triode Media Group, Ltd., gave the 23 kids a day of media practice. They did this for free - what would normally have cost many thousands of dollars. So a great thanks to them! These kids are elite up-and-coming players who may be looking for sponsors and get interviewed by the media - and now they are a lot more ready than before.
We had two vans, a 15-passenger one we rented for the day (driven by Sean), and an eight-passenger one (driven by Cory), plus Arcot Naresh and I driving our cars. We left around 11:15 AM, with the various vehicles arriving between 1:30 and ...Read More
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Different Partners but Once Again Success For Victor Liu
(Courtesy of ITTF))Just under one year ago, in the setting of the Queen Elizabeth Stadium, Victor Liu of the United States emerged successful in the Cadet Boys' Team title; approaching twelve months later in the very same venue, on Saturday 16th July, he repeated the feat.
Only at the Nikon 2016 Hong Kong Junior and Cadet Open, it was with a different partner; in 2015 he had joined forces with China's Xu Yingbin, now it was in harness with Yang Shuo, also from China.
Likewise, it was a pleasant return to the Special Administrative Region of China for Xu Yingbin; alongside Yu Heyi and Yuan Licen, he was a member of the successful outfit that struck gold in the Junior Boys' Team event.
Furthermore, for both players it was success in style; neither outfit was at any stage stretched the full five match distance...Read More
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SPiN San Fransisco to Host 2016 US Olympic Table Tennis Team
(Courtesy of USATT) June 16, 2016 (San Francisco, CA) - SPiN San Francisco, the new ping pong social club, will host the 2016 US Olympic Table Tennis Team for the first-ever "Friends with Paddles" fundraiser on Thursday, July 21st, just days before the team is set to leave for Rio to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games.
The evening will feature exhibitions from both the Men's and Women's teams, along with opportunities for attendees to play some pong and interact with the Olympians. 2016 marks the first time that the US has qualified both Men's and Women's teams for an Olympic Games. 2016 marks the first time in the history of USATT that both a men's and women's team have qualified for the Olympics in the same year.
"I am very excited that SPiN San Francisco will be hosting our 2016 Olympic table tennis team for this great event," commented SPiN owner and founder Susan Sarandon. "I am sure that everyone will be amazed by these great athletes that will ...More Information
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Stephanie Chen Named USATT's First Youth Ambassador
(Courtesy of USATT) July 8, 2016 (Colorado Springs, CO) - USA Table Tennis (USATT) CEO Gordon Kaye announced today that Stephanie Chen has been named the organization's first "Youth Sport Ambassador." In that role, Chen will work with the organization to develop grassroots youth-oriented initiatives in Northern California. Chen, 13, is from Fremont, California.
"We are very excited to have Stephanie on board to work with us to identify and develop opportunities to grow interest in the sport among kids," commented Kaye. "She really understands well the many benefits of playing table tennis, and I am confident she will do a great job helping us better introduce the sport among her peers."
"I have been playing competitively for about four years, and have really grown to love the sport and all of the fun things that go along with being part of the community," added Chen. You can see the interview with her and CEO Gordon Kaye here...Watch Interview
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Ping Pong? Child's Game. Table Tennis? That's a 16 Year Old's Ticket to Rio. (Kanak Jha NY Time Front Page)
(Courtesy of Sam Borden/New York Times) Halmstad, Sweden - Kanak Jha is not sure when he made the change. He thinks it was maybe when he was 9 or 10. He does not know the precise moment but he knows it was significant all the same.
"I think it was sort of all of a sudden," he said recently. "I just started doing it. I said, 'table tennis' instead of 'ping pong'."
He paused. "I guess that's because that's what I was playing."
The distinction may seem to be only semantics. But the difference between ping pong (a game largely associated with basements, fraternity houses and rec centers) and table tennis (a sport with more than 200 national associations worldwide) is substantial. If it were not, Jha would not have moved here, about 5,500 miles from his Northern California home, to train five or six hours a day with some of the...Read Full Article
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13 Stages - Develop a Systematic Approach to Learning a New Skill (Courtesy of Samson Dubina)
Stage #1 Understanding the Need
You have a great forehand loop. You are developing footwork in order to use your forehand as much as possible while still maintaining balance and control. However, you aren't able to cover the extreme angles and often get stuck blocking or counterdriving with your backhand. You also aren't able to attack strong against a hard, low block. You clearly understand the a backhand loop against topspin is vital to your game, you are willing to work hard to get this new weapon. Again, this thinking can be applied to any new skill, not just the backhand loop.
Stage #2 Visualization
Next, you need to be able to visualize it in your mind. Start by watching some youtube videos of the world's top players performing this stroke; if possible ...Read More
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Meet The Athletes - Jamberry
(Courtesy of Jamberry)
Jamberry Nails have released another video introducing US Table Tennis Olympians Jiaqi Zheng and Jennifer Wu. Earlier this month they released another video introducing Lily Zhang which you can see here.
Jamberry are using the hashtag #GoForGold and are donating $3.50 for every #GoForGold nail wrap purchased to support female athletes travelling to the Summer Olympic Games in Rio.
As you may have seen on the social media platforms of the Women's Olympic Team, Jamberry have customized USA flag nail designs to get even more behind team USA!
This applies to all purchases made before 8/21/16.
We would like to thank Jamberry for supporting our Women's Olympic Table Tennis Team and encourage anybody to check out the #GoForGold products! Watch the Video
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Expert Table Tennis Podcast with Alan Cooke
(Courtesy of Expert Table Tennis/Ben Larcombe) Alan Cooke is the Performance Coach at Table Tennis England. That means he works very closely with our national teams and travels with them to tournaments. If you watched any of the World Team Championships out in Kuala Lumpur you will have seen Alan corner coaching Paul Drinkhall, Liam Pitchford, and Sam Walker to an incredible bronze medal result.
As a player, Alan Cooke made his England senior debut in 1984. He won countless national titles and was consistently England #1 during his era. He reached a career high of 27th in the world rankings in 1990 and made a comeback to the sport in the 2000s becoming the over 40 world champion in 2006.
Ever since Kuala Lumpur I've been keen to get Alan on the podcast. We were finally able to make it happen last week and had a chat about England's remarkable and unexpected bronze medal at the World Team Championships back in March and... Listen Now!
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History of USATT - Volume XVII - Chapter 18
(Courtesy of Tim Boggan) 1990: March Tournaments (including Power Poon's $8,500 Louisiana Open.) LeRoy Petersen begins this chapter for us by covering the $2000 March 23-25 Wisner, NE Open.
"The 15th Annual Wisner Open was one of our best ever with 110 players competing in 24 events. Fifty players entered the open singles including the Olympic Training Center players based in Colorado Springs, and the always tough Minnesota group of Olson, Wiig, Lonnon, Seidenfeld, Ake Petterson and Jon Soderberg. Add last year's champ Todd Petterson, now of Phoenix, as well as Jorgen Elovsson from South Carolina, and needless to say we had a very interesting draw. Our only problem was Tong Sheng 'Jack' Huang, coach at the Colorado Springs Training Center - he was just too strongin winning all of his matches in straight games.
"This year's tournament was a real eye opener for our fifty junior players...Read More
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