I have just returned from the world championships in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the magazine goes to the printer in the morning. The next issue will contain more extensive coverage of the event. In this issue’s "association primer series," I would like to share with you information about my international role as USATT president.

Attending this event gave me an opportunity to interact with key ITTF officers and staff, presidents and key individuals from other associations, international players at all levels, our own delegation, and a wide range of event organizers, industry professionals and other attendees.

From that perspective, you might be able to envision how I spent almost all day every day in Malaysia: meeting with people. ITTF President Adham Sharara and I had a number of informal conversations. I updated him on our association’s goals and plans and he advised me on ways in which our association could work more closely with the ITTF.

Tong Lee (who attended the world championships as an unfunded second delegate), and I met with the ITTF’s Zlatko Cordas and Anders Thunstrom to iron out some matters regarding this summer’s U.S. Open/ITTF Pro Tour.

Beginning in Eindhoven and continuing in Kuala Lumpur, I have been expanding the circle of people I know within the ITTF’s member countries. I had many discussions with Bruce Burton of Canada and association officials within the Latin American Union about developing a mutually-beneficial relationship.

Mr. Yang Shuan of China and I plan to create stronger ties between our associations. In the next issue, I will report more on the latest news regarding our Youth/Coaches trip to China.

The cafeteria at the playing hall provided an excellent setting for me to have conversations with players and coaches worldwide. Many of them gave verbal commitments to attend this summer’s U.S. Open Pro Tour event in Fort Lauderdale.

Tim Boggan, as always, was a tremendous resource. He knows practically everybody and everything about the international table tennis community, and is somehow always where the action is.

I tried to balance my time between supporting our team and attending to our association’s business. I probably watched our teams play about half of their matches. Despite our men’s and women’s teams slight drop in world rankings this year, there was a strong sense of team spirit. Additionally, we are confident that Michelle Do obtained a world ranking, bringing us halfway to achieving one of this year’s performance markers. Our coaches, Dan Seemiller and Doru Gheorghe, along with team leader Bob Fox and team trainer Terry Drassal, worked well together.

Our team’s players were all cooperative and focused on doing their best. They freely expressed their opinions on ways to improve our association.

Other USATT delegation members – Rufford Harrison, Jimmy McClure, Y.C. Lee, Aly Salam and Azmy Ibrahim – all worked hard in performing their official roles and in providing me with valuable input and insight.

Tong Lee and Gerry Chua were dedicated photographers; I expect that we’ll see a lot of wonderful photos in the next issue. As our association’s treasurer, Tong also participated in several of the ITTF meetings. It was Tong who asked President Sharara if the ITTF could help Newgy deal with the financial hit it will suffer in retooling for the new 40mm ball. As a result of that inquiry, USA Table Tennis will be working with Newgy to draft a grant request from the ITTF.

Tong, who was born in Malaysia, also spoke to the general director of this tournament, who agreed to provide us with detailed information about the logistics of staging the event. This information will help us to further evaluate what steps we must take in order to host the world championships in, we hope, the not-too-distant future.

As I have stated in the past, our association will be run so that our activities are consistent with the goals articulated in our High Performance Plan. One of our goals is to increase our visibility and stature within the international table tennis community. I believe that our association made great progress in this area in Kuala Lumpur.