OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Although some of this has been discussed in other sections, I thought it would be worthwhile to dedicate a thread for ideas in promoting table tennis in your club or area.

I'll start off with an idea that I think could be useful, has probably been mentioned before... It would be great for either the ITTF or some of our national associations, to come up with a promotional video, specifically targeting new players or players that don't play at clubs...

It could include some highly impiratational clips of great or funny matches, but also include some basics, and emphasise how much fun it can be at much lower levels... It should also highlight the other benefits, such as low cost, good exercise, great social aspect, etc...

It can be released on DVD/CD, and should be free or very cheap so that clubs can bear the cost and send it to potential people for free, but should also be posted on video sites such as youtube...

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I think all clubs should be encouraged to put on a free day at least once a year where people can come and try the game out and talk to someone about what is involved in the sport. Putting on some enticing entertainment like a BBQ lunch and novelties. One of the difficulties in extending the game to more people is TT resources in terms of hall space and tables. A club with excess capacity like ours with times free can do this fairly easily. A club that has limited times available would find it harder.

Clubs that have facilities that are temporary and close to full capacity in those times would need to consider securing bigger or longer facility time. To go to this length means there has to be a certainty on sustaining the higher numbers, which can be risky. So its much easier for these clubs to stay fairly closed to new members (ie. not encourage it to grow too fast). This leaves TT in a position of limited growth potential then.

So promoting TT as a sport locally is a little restricted, but of course there is room for new players to a certain level at most clubs. And the more people that become involved and fall in love with the sport will only have positive impacts on extending the demand for new facilities. And TT clubs need to encourage this because the more people in the sport, the lower the overall cost to improve facilities as time goes by.

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We hav a local tt association manned by a grp of people who are greatly enthusiastic to TT. They organised annual tournament juz like all other tt clubs/regional bodies. I hav to give due respect to them for this.

This gp is naturally the best TT player in town.

Sadly, something is wrong there. Beside the annual tournament, no other TT activity is being carried out.

Me and my buddies hope to draw more people especially the young ones to play TT. It's our opinion that this is 1 way of occupying their time and thus drawing them away from bad influences, beside promoting TT.

When we approach them for recommending to attend elementary coaching course, we were denied. A minimum qualification in TT shall render recognition if we want to provide TT lessons to primary school students.

I am keen to do such volunteer work. Especially I plan to retire soon.

Is there such course thr internet? Understand practical workouts are a necessary part. Can I do the theory part 1st? Later make arrangement for the practical parts?

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Its a good question Jox, but I doubt it will get read and answered in this section. I'll pose it in the general section.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
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Yeah. More coverage, more promotion. Here in China, provincial league fixtures are broadcast on CCTV 5 as well as any tournament.

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Free Video Lessons like Pingskills done by ITTF to make it look more professional. In some parts of the world, most countries aren't into table tennis and that results to: No Coaching, No Equipment, No Actual Play. I'm sure this won't get coaches fired or something BUT I think this is a must because considering other countries, we're a bit lucky WE CAN PLAY TABLE TENNIS. So have fun in the sport we all know and love

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i was watching the european championships on tv with some of my non-tabletennis playing friends...

during the game ovtcharov vs. akerstrom there was a hassle about the sponge thickness, the referees "confiscated" two bats.. none of my friends understood what the hell was going on and actually lost interest.

these ridiciulous rules might be great for (bored) referees and ittf functionaries who like to play around with magnifying glasses and microscopes, but are tiresome for players and viewers and our sport as a whole.

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Yes I'm sure you're right... and it's exactly these people that we want to attract to our sport!

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I had a dream last night. My dream was just like a flashback in my Social Studies class talking about Third World Countries and how they had it rough. I want to at least increase their participation in table tennis since I know they can't get to play that much as too us guys having it good.

A Pro Tour Like event where only Third World Countries can enter. This is surely let them develop international experience and maybe someday one of them can enter internationally. Provided the venue isn't in their country of course since I think they have economic and financial issues?

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I am trying to start a new club and have been having problems finding a place to play. I just found out that the apartment complex I live at have a club house that never gets used. It can fit about 3 tables. It also have a large lawn where I could fix 100 tables, over the whole apartment complex. I was thinking I could have the wimbeldon of the table tennis championships. On the lawns of boise , I think it could be a lot of fun.

To get people really interested in a sport you have to catch them at a young age, otherwise they will already have picked a sport they want to play. The main problem for table tennis in this regard is that the game is too difficult for (most) 5-6-7 year olds. As they have not developed their finer motor skills yet. So in general youngsters start at 7-9 year old, but more often than not 10-12 year old. This means that sports like football, hockey, volleybal, etc. have a several years head start as you can start playing football at age 4-5. So we miss out on a large group of players that have already taken up another sport at an earlier age.

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Very interesting thought there wfberkhof!

Our sport has definitely become more and more harder to learn over the decades as it's become faster and spinnier, so you're right, kids have to be older to be able to handle those skills. I wonder if this is another key reason why our sport is declining? This will be hard to change though, as it would require major changes to the game we know today...

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I also think it's difficult to allow little kids to play because of the size of the table. Because it's too high and wide for a young kid to navigate all that space and also to your point, they don't have the fine motor skills. Maybe we need to use some training style tables that are smaller to help them learn to play.

My Chinese coach told me that when he was about 4 years old that they put down a 2x6 board as a "net" and played on the ground. No wonder China is so far ahead...

We need to just give our kids any kind of paddle and some balls and just tell them to go out and play and let them invent their own games until they get older and want to play "for real."

 

 

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Let me just throw out a bit of a wrench into this: WHY do we want to promote table tennis? Is it necessarily a good idea?

Part of what I like about table tennis right now is that, at least in the U.S., it's largely an outsider sport, which means that it's played mostly by foreigners from countries where it's popular and Americans who are often not your conventional jocks that you might find in other sports. I'm actually quite happy about this state of affairs, as it means that, for the most part, when I play table tennis, I can socialize with people I like and others who are, at least, interesting. I certainly wouldn't have the same feeling stepping onto a basketball court, for instance (assuming I could play basketball). Using basketball as our example again, the money and attention that it has succeeded in attracting have certainly made the game popular but at the expense of making it unappealing to people like me, both because of the crowd it attracts and the behaviors it inspires, breeding a culture of disrespect and aggressive showboating. So, while making table tennis more mainstream would likely result in better venues, more prize money, less ridicule and an overall higher level of play, I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff. It's simply the case that mass commercial culture in market-driven societies corrupts anything it touches, and table tennis will be no exception.

Having said that, I think that one thing that makes table tennis less popular than other sports is just that it doesn't make for great television. The ball is too small and moves too quickly, and the importance of spin in the game -- a feature that's easier to feel than to see from the sidelines -- makes it hard to appreciate what's going on. I think that one thing that would make it more popular, therefore, is finding a way of televising it that would be more viewer-friendly. For instance, some television networks have used animations to make the puck in hockey games (which also moves too quickly for television) glow, and they show a streaking line to mark its trajectory in the game. Perhaps something similar would work for table tennis. They could make the ball appear bigger than it is (the 80mm ball?). Or perhaps even showing the game at a very slightly reduced speed would do the trick, though this would, of course, have the downside of making the game look less fast-paced and dynamic, so perhaps frequent slow motion replays of exciting points would be an adequate substitute. Also needed is commentary that is geared more toward people who don't necessarily understand what's going on. I'm not suggesting that attractive television coverage is all that's needed, but for any sport to make it big in modern-day societies, effective television presentation is a must.

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