Hi?

It's been a while. Almost ten years it seems.

In 2014 I was a fairly active referee, working about 15 tournaments per year.

I was a member of the USATT Board of Directors. It was a good board; people got along, we had healthy arguments, and advancement of the association came first. There was very little politics. We had just hired a new CEO, Gordon Kaye. I finished my four-year term in 2016.

I was also a member of the ITTF Equipment Committee. This took a decent amount of my time. For my first few terms there was not much politics in the committee, but there was a lot of politics in the ITTF as a whole. The sport always came first for me, and perhaps my unwillingness to play politics hindered my effectiveness there.

I was responsible for racket coverings, and in that role helped make a few million dollars for the ITTF. I was also able to put dozens of little things into the rules that improve the sport's integrity today. But I could no longer bear the environment and the drastic emphasis on marketing rather than science and fair play. I left quietly in 2023 after ten years of service, my only reward being personal satisfaction for helping the sport survive. So be it.

Today I'm at the lowest amount of table tennis activity I've had for 20 years. I still officiate at tournaments once in a while, and still serve as competition manager at the NCTTA Championships, but that's it. It's hard to say whether I left the sport, or the sport left me.

But I still keep an eye on things. Sometimes I see things that I think table tennis fans should care about. Maybe I'll write about them.