There is supposed to be some medal presentation for the Day One Round Robin groups Thursday Morning LA time.
The comp is 4 days long.
I umpired mainly lower division matches, because higher division is Thursday. Still, the players were having a certified BLAST and when Haiti was done with their round robin finishing position ONE and the athlete & coach got back to the fans in bleachers, they literally ERUPTED with 20 JOYOUS screaming joyful cheering for him.
It is some serious good stuff and I am glad I get to see it upfront.
I umpired/assistant umpired matches with players from Haiti, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Morocco, South Africa, and a few others I cannot name off the top of my head. All those French speaking countries really getting me to talk French again
Played 5 doubles matches with two coaches from Haiti after all matches were done while waiting for bus to arrive. Coach Christophe and Coach Jean can really play. I teamed with Coach Christophe for 3 matches and it was a blast talking smackdown TT talk in french inventing new sayings that were hilarious when we won a good point or playfully taunting each other. Both those guys can lay the smack down on the ball and Jean is older than me.
We ended up having my Korean/American friend Umpire team up with me for the last two matches and we somehow got by those Haitian aces. Hey - that ryhmes.
Taught them a new cheer after a point, you bump each other chest high with the muscles on the forearm and each player shoots his arm upward with finger pointing up and fun face expression. Of course there was the roll up sleeve and kiss bicep or give thumbs up.
Here is the TT site for the games.
http://www.la2015.org/sports/table-tennis
Here is teh site for TT results.
http://www.la2015.org/results?sportID=Table Tennis