School Success
I just came across your videos on YouTube and they are absolutely wonderful!
I teach art at a a small high school in Northern California. I’ve always been an avid recreational player and I recently donated my old table to our school. The table became so popular that another teacher, Cameron Layton, wrote a grant and we purchased three more tables. Since that time ping pong has become very popular on campus. Our school isn’t big enough to field football or baseball teams so we can never compete with the other schools in our area.
Last October a couple of local ping pong clubs got together and put on a tournament and there was high school team division. Cameron and I managed to cobble together two teams from our campus and we competed against seven other teams from the other schools in our district. Our two teams came in first and second! It was like a miracle or something!
Anyhow, we were good just because we played a lot and really enjoyed the game but like I said I’m only a recreational player with no real idea of proper fundamentals. Now there are much higher expectations for this tournament which has become an annual event. Thanks to your instructional videos we can finally learn how to do things properly and start really improving.
Thank you again!
Craig
Neville
commented on January 16th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Hi Craig,
Having coached school teams for around 30 years I can understand how you are feeling. I think that the greatest way you can contribute to the development of your students is for you to join a club and start playing. Not only will you learn and improve your game but you will be gaining experience which you can use to advise your students on topics from choosing rubbers to tactics against different types of players. I’m not sure what competition is like in the States, but here in Australia in the 40 odd years I have been playing, I have always found my team mates and opponents to be a terrific bunch of people. Join up. In a very short period of time your game will have improved out of sight. I’m sure you’ll be glad you did. You’ll never know how good you could be unless you give it a go.
Good Luck with all your endeavours.
Neville