Since this issue of the magazine coincides with the conclusion of my one-year term as president of USA Table Tennis, I am devoting this article in the "association primer series" to discussing my role as the president, including my assessment of the year in review.

One of the most common misconceptions about the presidency is that it is a paid position. It is not. As a volunteer, I have devoted upwards of 40 hours a week and traveled on about 15 trips, including twice for roughly two weeks. It’s been an intense year.

I set out with a plan to implement several immediate changes. In other areas, opportunities presented themselves to us. In all, I will distill the activities of this past year down to a discussion of ten points: our magazine, our headquarters staff, our legal counsel, our USOC relations, our coaching program, our budget, our tournament structure, our national schools program, our ITTF/international relations, and our association’s prospects for growth.

1) Magazine

Last July Acting Executive Director Linda Gleeson and this administration decided to hire Larry Hodges to serve as the interim editor/webmaster when the vacancy in the position occurred. We removed the in-house publication responsibility from headquarters at a time when the executive director position was also vacant. Larry immediately created a schedule to get the publication cycle back in sync with the cover months, noticeably improved the magazine and website content, and dramatically increased advertising revenues. He has done an outstanding job. Needless to say, our executive director Ben Nisbet, upon being hired, decided to keep Larry on.

When I became president last May, we had already been without an executive director for three months. A large backlog of work was becoming larger on a daily basis. Our former Deputy Executive Director, Linda Gleeson, stepped in and valiantly attempted to keep our association functioning smoothly during the transition. It was a hectic time period. I wound up getting more involved in the operational aspects of our association than I had intended to, but the prolonged job vacancy also proved to be a blessing in that I had tremendous say in the ultimate hiring of Ben Nisbet as the new executive director.

Ben’s knowledge of table tennis – both as a once-2300 player and as a 6-year Board member and association treasurer – as well as his long-term career in banking inspired the Board to hire someone from our association to serve as the executive director. The alternative was to hire a sports management professional who had never been exposed to table tennis. I was confident then that we made the right decision; from my point of view, we needed an in-house leader who understood our sport, our association, as well as our relationships with the USOC and the ITTF. From the feedback that I’ve heard, the general consensus is that Ben has been doing an excellent job.

Even though the roles of the president and the executive director are distinct, in reality, the two roles are quite intertwined. The goals of the president and the executive director should be mutual. Their visions should be shared. And their public positions should be, for the most part, unified. When these all occur, the energies of the president and the executive director coalesce and that synergy brings a surge of progress. While we still have a great deal of work to do, I am confident that we are well-focused and are moving forward quickly.

As an attorney, I stressed to Ben that getting our legal affairs in order would be a high priority. Ben decided to change our legal counsel. Our approach has shifted from being reactionary to being proactive in dealing with legal issues. This approach has also added to my workload since I usually review and discuss almost all of our developing and pending legal issues with Ben. While this new focus on our legal matters has no doubt added to our business expenses in the short-term, we have taken dramatic steps to protect our association’s present and future legal interests.

Before I discuss the year-long interaction we have had with the USOC, I would like to share some breaking news. On the weekend of April 15, I attended the USOC Board of Directors meeting. I even had the chance to meet the USOC’s new chief operating officer, Norm Blake. Early media reports had stirred up some controversy. There were media reports that he had actually targeted table tennis as one of the sports that would receive even less financial support from the USOC. In marked contrast to those reports, according to his formal presentation, our funding will not decrease. Certainly there will be many changes in our relationship with the USOC. Future "association primer series" articles will undoubtedly address both our evolving relationship and specific details as they emerge.

Over the last weekend in August, a group of eight participants drafted our new High Performance Plan (Plan) with the guidance of our USOC liaison, Kelly Skinner. Again, while the workload was significant, this was another blessing because the resulting document gave us an association blueprint that is consistent with this administration’s goals and intents. We were able to postpone the planning weekend to the last possible time when everything could still be completed in order to meet the other involved deadlines – the setting of our 2000 markers and our 2000 budget – but would also include our newly-hired executive director. The intense weekend became, in essence, Ben’s first days on the job.

During the Plan meeting, our USOC liaison made it clear that the USOC was going to significantly increase its pressure on us to produce Olympic medalists. Indeed, the USOC merged each sport’s Athlete Development Pipeline into the heart of that national governing body’s Plan. In September the Board approved the essence of our new Plan, which was still in draft and skeletal form, and immediately committed ourselves to following the six goals we enunciated in our new guiding document. I will now discuss the progress we have made on those six goals.

Early on in my presidency, both of our national coaches, Dan Seemiller and Doru Gheorghe, exhibited the desire not only to coach the national team, but also to assume the overall responsibility for our national coaching development plan. I agreed. I felt that there should be a mutuality of purpose between the national coaches and the coaching committee. The USOC implicitly shared this same point of view through its mandate that the national coaches both attend and write a significant portion of our Plan. So, while our coaches gear up for the Olympics, they are also laying the foundation for a new national coaching infrastructure along with Coaching Committee Chair Mark Nordby.

Although both our men’s and women’s team fell slightly in their world rankings, we also enjoyed wonderful accomplishments this year. USA swept the Pan Am Games gold medals as well as a bronze medal. We also just garnered nearly all podium spots during our continental qualifications for the Olympic positions.

The most noteworthy accomplishment we’ve had in this area is our 4-year clothing sponsorship contract, which we have valued at over $125,000. As we go to press, there are a couple of other sponsorship negotiations that we appear to be close to finalizing.

The staging of the Nationals and the Olympic qualification trials, and the pre-tournament preparation for the 2000 U.S. Open/ITTF Pro Tour were critical because our events serve as a public and visible barometer of our association’s ability to become a more viable sport in our country.

Our association’s handling of the Olympic qualifications in Rochester, NY drew favorable remarks from the Canadian association as well as ITTF President Adham Sharara. Although Adham was not able to attend the event, he was impressed by both the television coverage that he saw and the feedback that the Canadians gave him. I believe that we are poised to deliver similar results this summer at our U.S. Open/ITTF Pro Tour.

Our markers require us to initiate a minimum of two regional school programs. In March our association signed a contract with the Warren Company. The Warren Company is responsible for finding both interested school systems and local funding to support bringing a multi-sports program into the schools. This program is already underway in the Rochester, NY area. The Palm Beach County Sports Commission has also expressed strong interest in starting a school program this fall.

Due to the cancellation of the world championships in Belgrade last spring, the event was eventually split into two tournaments – in Holland and in Malaysia – and so I wound up attending two world championships within this past year when normally no world championships would have been scheduled. The once-in-four-years Pan Am Games also coincidentally fell into this time period. The trips enabled me to pursue an international agenda for our association.

Last August Adham Sharara was elected the new president of the ITTF. One of his priorities is to assist our association in promoting the growth of table tennis in the United States. We welcome his commitment.

I have also proposed a new relationship with the Chinese association. We see the mutual benefits that we can derive through modernizing "ping pong diplomacy" as greater market and business opportunities develop between our two countries.

This goal is perhaps our most general and all-encompassing goal. Club Development & Membership Services Chair Alan Williams is working hard to refine proposals for the Board to consider. Similarly, George Brathwaite is developing a league proposal.

One aspect of fostering a positive environment for clubs to grow and prosper is for the Board to treat our general membership with respect. As I promised when I ran for election in 1998, I will seek to restore the vote for our association’s officers to the general membership at our Board’s May meeting. I also support removing substantive election matters from our association’s standing rules and placing them in our By-Laws. Proposals to substantially change election procedures should require adequate notice to the membership to allow for timely membership feedback in order to avoid retroactive announcements or self-delegation of authority on the Board’s part. Our next election cycle will take place in 2001, which will overlap nicely with the 2000-2004 quadrennial cycle. Because both the USOC and the ITTF operate on quadrennial cycles, I will propose that we adapt our election cycle to the Olympic quadrennium. That way future administrations would be responsible for both creating and carrying out one in the same vision.

And so, as the term of my presidency draws to an end, I thought it might be interesting to write about the year in review. If it is the will of the Board when we convene the first weekend in May, I am willing to continue to serve as president until the next election in 2001 when, hopefully, the membership will once again elect its officers.

Without specifically mentioning any names, I also want to thank everyone who has dedicated hard work, long hours, and personal talents toward the advancement of our sport during my term as president. I have appreciated it immensely. Volunteers are critical to our success.