Four years ago, the United States Coaching Committee had a dream to bring the ITTF Coaching Development Programme to the USA Table Tennis Association and to use that programme to bring about a new professional culture for American Coaches.
Immediately, the International Table Tennis Federation supported that dream by sending Glenn Tepper, Deputy ITTF Deputy Chief Executive Officer, to conduct the first ever ITTF/PTT Level One Course and Level One Course Conductor Course to be held in the United States.
Undoubtedly, the year 2010 was a watershed.
The programme quickly took off in the United States, as self-funded regional ITTF Courses were organised in all regions of the country.
In 2012, another milestone for the programme was reached as the ITTF showed its support to the USA Table Table Tennis Association by sending Philippe Molodzoff, author of the ITTF Advanced Manual, to conduct the first ever ITTF Level Two Course in the United States.
Thanks to the efforts of United States Course Conductors, Christian Lillieroos, Sydney Christophe, Larry Hodges,
and Richard McAfee; now 23 ITTF Courses have now been conducted. The result of these efforts is that the ITTF Coaches Registry now lists 204 USA ITTF Certified Coaches.
Now a new milestone has been reached. The first ever ITTF Level Three Course to be conducted in the United States was held from October 12-19.
Venue for the course was the same United States Olympic Training Center used for that first ITTF Course four years ago.
Conductor for this historic course was Richard McAfee; the current USATT Coaching Chairman Federico Bassetti served as the course organizer. A special “thank you” to Joola USA who supplied their new Poly Balls for the course and also gave each coach a sample pack of balls as a gift.
To be eligible to attend an ITTF Level Three Course, the Level Two Coaches had to previously achieved high scores on their Level Two Exams.
Twelve coaches from around the United States took part in this course. Special speakers for the course included Doru Gheorghe, USA Table Tennis High Performance Director and Gordon Kaye, the new Chief Executive Officer of USA Table Tennis.
In addition the staff at USA Table Tennis hosted a luncheon of all the participants at the Headquarters.
After eight days of intense study and a series of five exams, the good news was that all the participants had passed.
While the original dream of establishing the ITTF Coaching Education Programme within the United States may be coming to an end. A new dream of taking the ITTF/PTT Level One Course into the American Schools is on the horizon.
A new group of United States, ITTF Level One Course Conductors was recently trained with a goal of setting up pilot school programmes around the country using the ITTF Level One Course to train physical education teachers.
In just four short years USA Table Tennis has put into place all three levels of the ITTF Coaching Courses and has trained coaches in every region of the country. More ITTF Courses at all levels are being planned for 2015.
While much work remains to be done, many positive results and new programmes can already be seen from the work of these professionally trained ITTF Coaches.
