Portland, Oregon
By Jim Scott (From Nov/Dec 1999 USA Table Tennis Magazine)

"If I had 30,000 young players training like crazy every day for five years, I would beat China the Olympics after next." Guess who said that?

Gee, if someone could really do this, it would mean he had developed a great program on a national basis to find and develop all these fanatics. What would this program be?

Let's call it The Big Whack, because in 1995 I decided to have a big tournament emphasizing whacking a ping pong ball. It occurred to me that I could have some fun getting thousands of juniors in my area watching and playing table tennis by offering them a tournament at the end of the year. They could actually qualify for it at their own schools.

What developed was a tournament that has grown each year and helped develop several clubs in the Portland Metro area. These are not USATT clubs, yet.

In 1998-99, about 30 schools held a preliminary tournament to send qualifiers to the May 1999 Big Whack final. (See July/August issue, page 58.)

Let's assume all 30 schools are given free USATT memberships for all club members. Let's assume that, because it's after school during "at-risk" hours, parents feel it's a great activity in a non-injury sport, and we can get 30 members per club. This would be 30 clubs of 30 members or almost 1000 new semi-serious USATT junior members in my city alone.

If the USATT were to work with me to implement this in 39 other major metro areas (and several USATT officers have shown interest in this concept), we would be able to develop about 40,000 semi-serious USATT junior members.

Then let's say this sounds good to corporations or other potentially interested sponsors, because it:

1. Keeps kids off the street during at-risk hours;
2. Develops Olympic athletes to win world titles.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? So the corporations or other sponsors agree to put up $2,000,000 a year between them to pay for all the "free" memberships. Each junior receives the membership for one year only and then decides whether to stay serious and purchase his own membership thereafter.

Meanwhile, we build our USATT tournaments toward more junior events which are low-cost. They could be age events or U500, U700, U900 types. This way many of them win things and start to tend toward "fanaticism" toward our sport. Once they become table tennis fanatics, we're talking 2000+ ratings within a year or so, and then 2600 players in another year or so. Then gold in the Olympics after next!!! (Most knowledgable coaches would say that this is impossible in this short a time frame. So let's give them that, and instead of 2004, shoot for 2008. But folks, the point is that if we don't get started, we'll never get there!)

Success breeds more money and more money helps for more successful programs. I think we can spread a Big Whack model across the nation with a commitment by USATT and a written synopsis that sponsors will buy.

Here's what we did in 1995-96 (our first year) which was greatly exceeded in 1997-98 and 1998-99:

1. We found 17 schools who already had enough tables to hold a preliminary tournament.
2. We did a school assembly to promote their tournament.
3. We helped them run their tournaments and qualified several of their players for the year-end Big Whack championship.
4. We held the Big Whack at Portland Table Tennis Club in categories for elementary school (K-5), Middle (6-8) and high school (9-12) for both boys and girls. It was pretty great. Between Stiga, Paddle Palace, ASTI and the Oregon State Games, the prizes were terrific.

Note the demographics of the tournaments in our first year (1995-96):

Mar. 20 Neil Armstrong Middle 35 9
Mar. 29 Gregory Heights Middle 25 12
Mar. 29 Lincoln High 8 6
Apr. 4 George Middle 21 9
Apr. 9 Portland Christian 3 3
Apr.10 Parkrose Middle 5 5
Apr. 13 David Douglas High 9 9
Apr. 16-18 Binnsmead Middle 24 8
Apr. 24 N. Marion Elementary 20 8
Apr. 25 Gray Middle 39 19
Apr. 26 Sellwood Middle 42 14
Apr. 26 Lot Whitcomb Elem. 6 6
Apr. 27 Tigurd High 7 7
Apr. 27 Meadow Park Middle 18 14
May 4 Westview High 7 7
May 11 Thomas Elementary 5 5
May 15 Fernwood Middle 15 9
Total 287 148

Only 96 of the qualifiers showed up for the finals at The Big Whack at the end of May. Who cares; it's not the final tournament that's important but the locations of the preliminaries. Most of them are still playing ping pong on a regular basis as the result of our efforts. And the 96 players battled hard in the finals!

In 1997-98 and 1998-99, we did exhibitions each year in front of 15-20,000 students and had in excess of 2000 players in the preliminary tournaments. We developed a 9-team high school league in 1998-99 and also had a mini-middle school league with perpetual trophies established separately for boys' and girls' categories.

We have been favored with two unusually beneficial "strokes" of fortune. One, Escalade Sports has supported us in a major way with equipment which we could get into many of the schools. They have also allowed us the services of Scott Preiss, who most of our students still believe is world champion. Two, in 1998-99, Fan Yi Yong moved to Portland. He did many of the exhibitions with us, which adds absolutely world-class credibility to our event. After all, Fan has beaten some world champions in his career and can also show our local juniors and sponsors how to win each year at the Stiga Pacific Rim Open as he did in 1998.

I am an insurance man. But I think I can win us some golds in the 2004 Olympics. All I need is USATT commitment to do national programs like The Big Whack, money, and about 30,000 junior fanatics.

Major Big Whack contributors Scott Preiss, Whitney Ping,
Jack Elder, Judy Hoarfrost, Fan Yi Yong and Jim Scott.