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Team JOOLA John Leach John Leach - Trip to Junior/Pan Am Trials
Team JOOLA John Leach John Leach - Trip to Junior/Pan Am Trials | John Leach - Trip to Junior/Pan Am Trials |
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| Written by John Leach | |
| Sunday, 04 March 2007 | |
 John Leach @ Pan Ams Hello Everyone! John Leach here, just on my way back from the Junior/Pan Am Team Trials. If you are reading this, you probably know that I am one of the new members of TEAM JOOLA USA. The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me, but also very productive and fun at the same time. I went by car from my house in Erie, Colorado all the way out to San Francisco to play the JOOLA NA Tour Western Open at UC Berkeley as a warm-up tournament for U.S Team Trials. High-level players such as Eric Owens and De Tran also came from across the U.S. to play in the Open event. The immediate chance to compete helped me make the 5,000+ foot altitude adjustment from the Denver area more quickly than usual. I spent the rest of the week training with players in the San Francisco suburbs, except for Monday which was a photo shoot with the rest of the TEAM JOOLA USA members (Trevor and I did get a few minutes of hitting in when the table wasn’t covered with equipment, clothing, and cameras!) I had chances to train with Stefan Feth while I was in the area, which helped a lot, as well as others like Whitney Ping and Barney Reed. When I am in Colorado it’s hard to get high quality training for most of the week. So, the chance to play every day in the Bay Area was great fun and experience. I also played in the Sacramento Winter Open on Saturday as a last-minute chance to get mentally ready. On Sunday I went down to San Diego and took a day off of training. Monday was a pretty light day as well. The U.S. Junior Team Trial itself went pretty well; I made the team, along with Joey Cochran, Steven Chan, and Justen Yao. I think that it will be a really enjoyable team since Steven was a great team member when we were both cadets, and Joey has been one of my good friends and teammates for years now. The Men’s Pan Am trial was also a great opportunity to learn because of my own playing experience as well as the chance to watch many of the country’s top players while competing. I was undefeated in my qualification group (Mike Dempsey, Nathaniel “Ming” Curran, and my fellow Junior Teammate Joey Cochran). However, I lost in the quarter finals of the qualification tournament to Shashin Shodhan, who ended up taking one of the two unseeded slots in the final giant round robin of the top 12 men. I spent the rest of my time at the trials watching matches and practicing with many of the players who reached the final stage of the trials (Congrats to my teammate Han for making the U.S. men’s team!). All in all, it was a great experience and also a whole lot of fun. I’m going back to Colorado now, but in less than 2 weeks I will be heading out to the St. Joseph Valley Open in Indiana. After that, I have a Team JOOLA exhibition in Orlando and then the North American Championships in Montreal at the beginning of April. Wish me luck! --John |
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