HELP: set up for a 15 year old girl

[Tony's Table Tennis]

However, the alternative is to take advice from a bunch of random people on the internet, who you have no idea about.

We don’t have any info on the girl in question, so everyone is really advising in the dark at this point.

Well, if you choose to post vague questions on the internet to random people, you are bond to get many kinds of answers

But I think in general, most would agree there is some form of "safe" bet, where money won't be wasted.
But as I said, intermediate in one place can be a national

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

We can debate this forever... anyone wanna know what ex-pro Korean coaches were issuing to their new students by the dozen when I waz there?

BTY OFF++ Schlager Carbon with a mid-firm early Gen Tensor both sides. Why issue the fastest and not so spinny gear on the planet? That setup offered the easiest control and performance of the shot that mattered to coach - the FH hit. After one month, a new player would be close to table blasting it back and forth high speed little spin 100, then 200 then 500 times in a row. Coach valued footwork and FH hitting back then... which was only a decade ago. More modern retiring pros are trying to get players to spin on both wings, so many go closer to the middle, which is still OFF with modern mid firm rubbers.

I would be barely able to hit 10-20 like that...good for me I do not find myself hitting the ball with little to no spin real hard more than once in a rally. I like to spin and geared my equipment to do that.

You forgot to point out, we talking 40+ hours a week of hitting in that one month
Give any kid 150~200 hours of proper coaching in side a month, many of them can do hundreds in a row.

 

[Der_Echte]

Yes Tony, you correct, the beginning adult crowd pile up the hours you state per month pretty quickly. These I speak of are getting 2x20 min lessons a week for each month for a total of 2.5ish hrs of coach training, but they tend to hit a couple hrs every day with each other encouraged by coach...so they average 40-50 hrs a month basically hitting the ball back and forth high speed to each other most of that time and practically nothing else. You right, they get real good at that real quick and bacically do not do anything else well, which is fine with coach at that point. These I speak of are adult players starting out, anywhere from young 20s to late 40s starting out. This is the crowd many coaches surprisingly give the power rocket setups to... but really, such a setup makes it very easy to do fast FH to FH at the table - the shot the coaches want this kind of player to use the most.

Sometimes, you see a parent bring in a kid for pro-coaching, but you do not see the kid play in the club.

The kids identified as school athletes are ID'd around 8-9 yrs old, the school hires an ex-pro to be a drill SGT going apeshyt on these kids hardcore boot camp doing mostly the most fundamental stuff - FH to FH, BH-BH, serves, serve receive, mid-distance loop to loop or hit to hit with some practice matches. This is 5x a week for 3-4 hrs a day in the school's multi-purpose room now turned into a pro TT camp. That also quickly adds up. Those coaches usually go kinda conservative early on for equipment and later hand them something more offensive.

 

[Amit Mehta]

For me, the faster setup worked very well too during the regular practice days, but during the competition days, it was a different story. The moment, i started hitting couple of balls outside the table, I used to loose confidence, become defensive, start to doubt myself and get second thoughts, This is VERY BAD. Your brain starts to meddle with your natural movements, this is game over then.

Last Saturday I went for a small one day tournament with my current slow setup. This was my first competition after switching back to slow setup and I am very happy with the outcome. I was playing a lot more freely without the fear (most of the time) of hitting the ball out of the table and hence obviously I won more than I expected. Another interesting thing that happened was, that during the later part of the day, when the tournament hall became quite humid, generating spin became very demanding and that's when the rallies also became longer. I guess it was the slow setup of mine, that helped me in keeping the ball on table on those relatively longer rallies and eventually win the points. Therefore for the OP, if you still haven't chosen the next setup for your kid, I feel now even more inclined to suggest you to stay with a slower setup.