Can the USA grow the sport

Baal · Oct 30, 2018

But proportionally the number of sports options (and other leisure activities including video games) has grown more.

Loopadoop · Oct 30, 2018

Now a higher percent of the population does participate in one of these activities.

For example women in 1968 did not participate in many sports or leisure activities compared to 2018. Women are 50 per cent of the population.

. ....

yoass · Oct 30, 2018

Baal said:
Almost every sport in the US is asking the same question. So many different sports to choose from, more than when I was a kid.

So you're saying everything is going down the drain because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice?

Baal · Oct 30, 2018

I am making the point that table tennis is losing participants everywhere in the world. This is also true for road cycling, tennis, swimming, and many other sports I am too lazy to research. There are more people but people have more ways than ever before to spend their leisure time, and getting kids to detach from their computers can be tough -- not an issue when I was a kid back in the pleistocene. This is just how things are. So sports federations have to make extraoridinary outreach efforts without much money to do it. It is easy to say, " get it I to the schools". Ok. That would help. But why should they do it? Who pays for it? Aren't there a bunch of other sports just as deserving? How do you overcome the "ping pong" image to get anyone to take it seriously? I have no answers, just pointing out that our sport is not alone.

And some new sports have a high "coolness" factor for kids compared to TT. What would a ten year old me have chosen? Mountain biking or table tennis? Or soccer? Maybe not TT.

Loopadoop · Oct 30, 2018

Pickleball has seen an increase in participation. This is probably in correlation with aging tennis players changing over.

yoass · Oct 30, 2018

Loopadoop said:
Pickleball has seen an increase in participation. This is probably in correlation with aging tennis players changing over.

What is that? Is that like padel?

Loopadoop · Oct 30, 2018

yoass said:
What is that? Is that like padel?

Pickleball, look it up at Wikipedia.

Brs · Oct 30, 2018

Pickleball is growing fast because they don't draw a line between real, serious pickleball and badx basement ping-pickle. Table tennis, aka pingpong, is also growing fast here. We just are too proud to call it table tennis. But when new players take up a sport, which is the only way it grows, they are always going to be bad. Only in TT do we define the newbies out of our game entirely. It's never going to grow until we drop that attitude.

FruitLoop · Oct 30, 2018

Larry Hodges latest blog is very relevant to this thread and also contains a lot of insider information from the top especially if you read his links.

brokenball · Oct 30, 2018

Loopadoop said:
Pickleball has seen an increase in participation. This is probably in correlation with aging tennis players changing over.

Yes and the equipment is cheap. The local sport center has better support for pickle ball than TT. The sport center has only 2 poor tables and not much room. The pickel ball players do share the tennis courts with tennis players by playing at different times.

David_123 · Oct 31, 2018

As I know USA is always dominate in sport. Best known country for sport after China.

Der_Echte · Oct 31, 2018

Tony and others emphasizing the opportunity to attract and retain recreational or social players is what I proposed as one of the top two objectives usatt needs to make a vision and execute.

These players would immediately fuel major pieces of industry... clothes, equipment, facilities, coaches, organizers.

Leads to many favorable outcome paths. Meets, leagues, comps, clubs, player development, achievement.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

FruitLoop · Oct 31, 2018

David_123 said:
As I know USA is always dominate in sport. Best known country for sport after China.

After China? I mean hey are clearly ahead of China sport wise in general. China are only good at Olympic sports they pump money into.

mart1nandersson · Oct 31, 2018

Baal said:
But proportionally the number of sports options (and other leisure activities including video games) has grown more.

That's exactly it.

The majority of the kids/teenagers in our club are either Asian or kids of parents who used to play (fairly) seriously during the 80ies and 90ies. There're obviously exceptions but it's not like there's a huge influx of kids who are bored and are thinking that playing some TT would be something that could kill some boring idle time. My assumption is that the situation is fairly similar all over the western hemisphere.

Attracting adults and middle aged people is not really going to grow the sport in any country. It needs to start with the kids. I've been fairly involved in veteran athletics (track & field for you Americans) and even though it's growing all over the world it's not going to grow the sport as such.

Loopadoop · Oct 31, 2018

Tennis has around 700,000 members in the USA, if the older ones transition to tt it would grow the sport additionally with their influence on the younger people.

Brs · Nov 1, 2018

Attracting adults and middle aged people is not really going to grow the sport in any country. It needs to start with the kids.

I'm not so sure about this. Who pays for kids to train? Who drives them to the club. I started playing tennis when I was 7 because my Dad played tennis. Adults who play TT are more likely to have kids who play TT.

Simas · Nov 1, 2018

Der_Echte said:
There are over 300,000 TT tables sold in USA every year.

Wow, that much?

fais said:
If we can break the stigma that TT isn't a sport but a recreational activity, then more than likely yes. However, I don't think we can ever break that stigma.

When I tell people I play(ed) TT competitively, I get laughed at. I've never gotten that reaction when I tell people I swim, play basketball or rock climb. Soccer, basketball, football, tennis, badminton and even golf are taken more seriously because they appear more physically demanding even at lower levels.

Really, worse then golf?
When I say I play TT, it's as if I said what I do for leisure and socialising...

Simas · Nov 1, 2018

Der_Echte said:
6. If a new player gets excited about TT from a vid or news or whatever and makes his way to a club, he or she gets defeated so overwhelmingly by an average, unathletic fat 50 yr old dude wearing headband with gut hanging over table who doesn't move unless bulldozer or earthquake/fire moves him... you get the idea.

nicely said

Loopadoop · Nov 1, 2018

Kids are pretty savvy now a days with the internet .. I don't think they will be surprised that much going into a club. They have already watched videos before they venture.

bircham boi · Nov 1, 2018

Loopadoop said:
Pickleball has seen an increase in participation.

Please stop. I don't have the time nor the energy to listen to more crap about pickleball. Thank you.

Can the USA grow the sport

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