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June 18, 2010

Paralympic Table Tennis Camp

Courtesy of USATT Newington, CT - June 12 & 13, 2010 - A Paralympic Table Tennis camp was held June 12-13th at the Newington Senior and Disabled Center in CT. This is the second year that a Paralympic camp has been held in Newington.

The attendees of the camp were Jennifer Johnson, Pam Fontaine, Tara Profitt and Coleen Rock. The camp was organized by Paralympic National Team Coach, Daniel Rutenberg and assisted by Roman Tinyszin and Jim Beckford.

On Thursday, June 10 before the camp started, athletes and coaches met at SPiN in New York City for a fun evening of table tennis under the rhythm of techno music and blue lights. At SPiN we met with standing disabled players Tahl Leibovitz and Samuel Huang. SPiN has 16 JOOLA tables and cushioned flooring. As soon as you walk through the doors you could feel the intense atmosphere and observe the fun people were having while playing table tennis. It was fascinating to see some familiar faces of table tennis enthusiast from New York, including the local and legendary Marty Reisman! A special thank you to Ernesto Ebuen, Spin’s head coach, Jonathan Brinklin and Franck Raharinosy with SPiN for allowing our access and arranging playing time for the Para Table Tennis athletes.

On Friday, June 11, we spent the afternoon at Elmwood Senior Center, were we met for open play. Our athletes had an opportunity to mingle, practice and play some matches against club and local players.

On Saturday and Sunday (June 12 & 13) the clinic & camp was run at the Newington Senior and Disabled Center. We used 5 wheelchair friendly tables. The camp and clinic covered more than 12 hours of instruction, drills, multi-balls, strategies, racket control & rules including wheelchair exceptions, anti-doping and games. Participants had an opportunity to train with a Coach as their training partner and also with top rated players from the area. The clinic benefited local players and volunteers who helped us over the weekend long.

We want to express our appreciation and special thanks to all the volunteers who made this event a complete success. The volunteers were: Cathy Chou, Una Cho, Lee Tolo, Peter Leathe, Mary Chun, Paul Giangrave, Jason Chyi. A special thank you goes to Coach Hwa, Mark Zager and Inna Laskova for assisting the coaches and played with the athletes who participated in this camp.

Future Paralympic table tennis camps and clinics will be posted in the USATT website.