JOOLA USA

Hello Everyone!

Sorry it's been such a long time since my last update. As some of you know, I have been training, along with Trevor, at TTC Zugbrucke in Germany, and it's difficult for me to get internet access for prolonged periods of time. I am actually back in the U.S. for a few weeks and wanted to tell you about what I have been up to so far.

There are 2 scheduled practice sessions a day running at about 2 hours apiece, but you can pretty much play whenever you want. I have been at the club as early as 6:30 a.m. and as late as 10:30 p.m., so making sure the playing hall is open isn't an issue. The only problem I have run into is that occasionally the hall is too full to play in, due to the fact that there is a Table Tennis School running weekly camps for players from all over the world.

The practice session I attend is for both the Bundesliga and the Div. 3 teams, which means that the Div. 3 players get destroyed by a Blaszczyk or Pavleka every once in a while, but nobody minds. We also get to play multiball sessions with the club coach Chen Zhibin, who was on the Chinese National Team and in the top ten world-ranked players, so it goes without saying that he has a wealth of knowledge. There are also a lot of other world class players who show up for this practice session: Nicole Struse comes regularly, as well as Jie Schopp. The Polish National Team came to visit a couple of weeks ago and should be coming back again shortly.

All in all, the level of play is tremendous and I think both Trevor and I would have felt really weird being around such high caliber players if it weren't for the the fact that they are all so... I don't know... nice. Nicole Struse lends us DVDs to watch (there really isn't too much else to do after practice in such a small town). Thomas Pavelka's old pull-up bar is now set up in our apartment, and we have gotten rides from at least 10 different people to, well, wherever we needed to go. It's a great team, and it's made the whole living experience a lot better than just eating, sleeping, and practicing.

 That's pretty much the story so far. I go back at the end of this month, when I will get to play in some Pro Tours (one advantage of playing for the U.S. is that we almost never take up all of our alotted slots in ITTF tournaments) and get ready for the WJTTC in Palo Alto in December. Right now I am in Maryland training with some of the players at MDTTC and I will be heading out to CA to play in the JOOLA Tour Finals in a couple of weeks. All is well, and I am excited to get some new stories to write about in the upcoming months. Thanks for reading.