Junior of the Month: Misha Kazantsev

By Tim Boggan

Misha being coached by USA Men's Coach Dan Seemiller at the North American Teams. Misha's normal coach is Masaaki Tajima. Photo by Csaba Nagy, copyright 2001.

He came to the U.S. from Moscow when he was 2½, accompanied by his considerably older sister, Maria, and his mother Yelena who, on arriving at John F. Kennedy airport in New York and momentarily leaving the children together nearby, hurried to retrieve their luggage….Then, oh, she got lost….Which meant, since Yelena’s English was practically non-existent, that the children were lost too….But JFK was not the airport-end of the world, and the family (Misha’s father, Yuri, had remained in Russia) was able, though not without difficulty, to make their way to San Francisco – as it happened, to a relative’s house which was next door to one, Maasaki Tajima, a longtime table tennis coach.

In 1997, by the time Misha was 9, Yelena had approached Tajima – who back in 1979 had gone to Japan to study coaching techniques and since then had acquired a reputation as an excellent teacher. At Masaaki’s Sunset Rec Park Club, Misha had initially enjoyed swinging at the ball as if he were trying to swat houseflies. But he persevered, and while Masaaki was being named USATT Developmental Coach of the Year, Misha improved. Really improved – for his rating went from 1131 in late 1997 to 2287 at the Nov. 2001 Baltimore Teams. And he just turned 13 on Sept. 20.

During this apprenticeship, Misha was a finalist in the 1998 U.S. Open Boys Under 10, trouncing earlier opponents, mercilessly, 4, 3 and 5, 4, before losing to an Ecuadorian in the deciding 3rd. But then at the U.S. Open and Closed, he continued to be beaten by the precocious U.S. U-12 Jr. Olympian and Jr. National Champion Adam Hugh. In the 2000 U. S. Open U-12’s Misha knocked off one Taiwanese in the semi’s, but couldn’t beat the other in the final, and in the 2001 U.S. Open U-14’s he lost in the semi’s to a visiting Yugoslav.

Nor were Misha’s strong showings in the Majors the only successes he had to talk about. In the 2000 Golden State, for example, he won the Under 3200 Doubles. The what? Well, hey, his partner was his (996-rated) mother. Masaaki, Misha said, was very helpful during this match. “He pointed out how I was badgering my mother too much, and after I stopped doing that we did much better. We were shown playing together on local TV, and with my mom just getting the ball over and me putting away shots we were able to win.” Hah, can Adam Hugh and his mother ever say they won an U-3200 Doubles?

Misha says he really has taken steps to improve his behavior on court as well as off (should we ask his mother?). He confides that on one occasion Maasaki suspended him for two weeks for bad sportsmanship, and once threatened to kick him out of his Club. He gives Maasaki “100% credit for all that I’ve learned in both table tennis and life.”

Of course he’s learned from others too. He likes his science courses at his Lawton Alternative School. And to keep his 4.0 average he reads – and not just for his classes. He’s 370 pages into Stephen Ambrose’s Eisenhower, a general Misha likes for “his modest character and obvious military genius.” He says he started Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but found it “boring.” His favorite sport, he says, is (and this is an anomaly?)…baseball. He participates in a Rec & Park League, and, though he plays both positions, he prefers shortstop to pitcher (defense rather than offense?)

He’s also learned from traveling abroad. In Oct., 2000 he was part of the Friendship Tour the U.S. contingent took of four cities in China. A memorable moment for Misha occurred before thousands of spectators at the World Cup in Yangzhou, where, just prior to Wang Liqin’s quarterfinal with Jean-Michel Saive, he played a match against a Chinese counterpart that was then shown on live TV all over China. This one-game match Misha, down 10-8, won, and with Eisenhower-like modesty says, “I got a net at 10-8, and then I made a lucky shot, and then I made a good shot, and then the Chinese kid missed. Later Saive asked him if he won, and when he said “Yes,” Saive said, “Good job.”

Misha had more trips to learn from in 2001. First, with some other U.S. players, he went to Vladislavovo, Poland, where he met his father, and played in a Junior Open in a Hall next to “a grim reminder of World War II – a submarine factory.” In one of his Cadet Boys matches he had an encouraging 23-21 in the 3rd win over a Belarus player, a little would-be Samsonov. Then he immediately went to France for two weeks, where of course the food was much better than in Poland (though he did like the Polish sausages), and where he interspersed his training with a Junior Open at Cherbourg.

Later, for three weeks in Sept.-Oct., Misha was in Japan gamely being drilled to death at the Butterfly Dohjo (Butterfly’s his sponsor). One thing, he says, “if you move back and forth eight hours a day, it’s bound to improve your footwork.” He had to make some other adjustments too. “I love sushi, but some of those other dishes….”Also, he says, “You have to be very polite, because the Japanese are. They kept asking me things like, ‘How’s your room? Temperature alright? Bed comfortable?’”

The learning of course continued back in the States, in Baltimore, where the USATT wanting to further “test” their most promising juniors, formed a U.S. Junior team with Han Xiao, Adam, and Misha. Their mentor there, Danny Seemiller, praised Misha for his natural touch, power, good court sense, and fighting spirit. “His serves are much improved, too,” said Danny, “and I like it that if someone challenges him, he challenges right back “ This was never more apparent than in Misha’s much talked about match with Sean O’Neill, in which, down 10-3 in the 5th, he miraculously won 9 points in a row.

Ironically, Misha no sooner accepted congratulations for his great win against Sean than, leading Sean’s teammate Jiachen “David” Wang two games to none, Misha surprised everyone, including himself, by losing the next three. “Against Wang,” Misha said later, “I let up a little and then he started playing awesome and I couldn’t do anything about it. Also, when I was going good, I got caught up in the heat of the moment, and didn’t play smart.”

Misha says he enjoys being interviewed because “it gets my emotions up” (as if he needed such a catalyst) and because “it makes me aware of things that I never paid attention to before” – like, say, players who loudly grunt as they strike the ball, or footstamp as they serve? Misha’s Mishima-martial-arts equivalent was a combative yell as he made contact on his service – a tactic that disturbed O’Neill enough that he rightly called for an umpire to have it stopped. Though the just-turned-teenager didn’t mean to take unfair advantage, he now realizes not only that he has the potential to beat good players but that, as one bystander watching said, and, as all “class” players agree, “You gotta play the Game with respect .”