1996 US National Championships!!

"Caesar's Greetings!", said the sign across from our host hotel, the Imperial Palace. (high-res) Much to the dismay of our cats, the Canups packed up and headed for a week in chilly LV. This was Sue's first national level tournament. Terry worked as the Tournament Referee, while Sue doubled up and worked data entry on the control desk.

Prior to the start of the tournament, we made an excursion to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Of course this also included stopping for extra tournament fuel for Sue at the Ethel-M chocolate factory. To our dismay, we lost the entire roll of this trip and only this one shot survived.

We also slipped up to the top of the Stratosphere. At 1800 feet, the view of the Vegas valley was spectacular. Here, you can see Sue asking the heavens for help in her play at the tournament (note the lightning rod just in case it was a negative reply).

The convention center gave us 110,000 sq. ft. to set up our 74 tables. As you can tell by these overview shots, L & R, the venue was huge. 12 of the tables were able to be placed on the rubberized flooring USATT purchased from the Olympics. There were more booths selling TT equipment than ever I can remember at such an event. Since they were placed inside the hall, they received maximum exposure to the participants and spectators.

Sue faced a difficult task changing personas during the event. Here you can see her trying to explain to the ball that it should go where she wants it to. And here she is digging a backhand serve. Although she failed to progress out of either of her round robins, all of the players that beat her enjoyed the experience.

There were 25 umpires at the tournament. 10 foriegn IUs, 12 domestic IUs and 3 domestic Regional Umpires. At the beginning of the event, all 3 were administered their National exams. 2 of them became NUs at the tournament. USA Table Tennis needs more participation by domestic umpires if we ever wish to host a worlds here. It takes years to climb the ladder and you need to start now!

The control desk ran like clockwork this year. We used remote stations to eliminate "cluster confusion" at the main desk. As we go this will become more efficient. Terry worked closely with Alan Barth, the Chief Umpire as well as everyone else at the desk.Teri Weaver, Norm Chinard, Bob Fox and Shonie Aki (seen here working hard at the computers) excelled at their efforts.

Meanwhile on the tournament floor, HTTC manager, Roberto Byles won both the 2300s and 2200s to bring glory to his center. Eric Owens another HTTC player, won the Under 22 age championship and made the quarter finals of the Men's Championship Division. His only loss of the tournament was to Chen Yinghua, the eventual winner.

Here is my runner up salute. Jim Butler on the Men's side and Amy Feng on the Women's. The Semis and finals were shot for TV and will air on Prime Sports Cable Network. The broadcast crew of Sean O'neill and Dan Seemiller (now coaching juniors in South Bend) worked hard to put together a good show.

In the end, despite a few rough instances, a good time was had by all. We want to thank the 700 or so players who played the 7-8000 matches over the course of the week for coming and participating. A special thanks to USA Table Tennis for making this happen!

See you next time in Ft. Lauderdale! (In the mean time, come on down to Houston and get some good matches in!)