Club of the Month: Indian Community Center

By Khoa Nguyen

The India Community Center (ICC) is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. It is the largest non-profit Indo-American Community Center and facility in North America. It provides essential resources, educational and enrichment opportunities to 150,000 Indo-Americans residing in the Bay Area as well as the greater American population.

Table tennis is a popular sport with Asian Diaspora youth. ICC is doing a tremendous job at promoting table tennis. Children of all ages enjoy the game and you can see kids as young as five to adults over 70 playing TT at ICC. There are several ongoing TT camps and individualized coaching provided at their facility in Milpitas. U.S. National level coach Dennis Davis coached kids at ICC in a special winter camp in December 2005. Stefan Feth coached the kids in their special summer camp this July. Recently, Michelle and I were invited to play and coach about 60-70 kids at an ICC event. There were about 200 spectators.

The current facility has only six tables but the ICC TT club will be expanding to a full-time facility with 15+ tables in 2007. Rajul Sheth, one of the most popular TT players from India (who has played active table tennis at Indian National level for more than 15 years) is Table Tennis Coordinator and the key instructor at the Club. Rajul said, “When I started coaching at ICC in Jan 2005 we had only 10 kids registered in table tennis classes and at present we have more than 119 kids registered for Group lessons and league in Fall Quarter 2006.”

ICC kids also started to dominate junior events in National tournaments. ICC won 13 Medals (including six gold) at the Junior Olympics in Virginia in July, 2006, and both Under 10 Boys and Under 10 Girls at the Stiga North American Tour at Berkeley. ICC also started a league for kids, with more then 20 kids playing more then 60 matches every Wednesday. With the Growing number of kids ICC hired Michelle Do (2000 U.S. Olympic team Member), Tuan Anh Nguyen (2350+ rated player) and four more 1800+ rated players as coaches to train their kids. Rajul’s approach ensures children become interested in the sport first with different fun games. Once the kids get engaged with the fun of the sport then moves to technique. Rajul said that if your child shows an interest in table tennis, ICC is definitely a place for them to learn and enhance their skills. 

For more information, contact Rajul Sheth at rraajul@yahoo.com.