Interview of Masaaki Tajima by Shashin Shodhan
June 10, 2008

By Shashin Shodhan What made you interested in coaching table-tennis? It started in mid 1970’s when I became the president of SF table tennis club. We had lot of juniors playing but didn’t have a coaching program and I thought it was a good idea to retain the kids.

For how long have you been coaching for?
About 33 years.

Are you a full-time coach?
Yes, I coach 5-6 days per week but I still do occasional consulting work in the hospitality industry.

Who are the best players that you have coached?
Starting from the 70’s, Erwin Hom, Dean Wong, Kurt Jensen (From Concord), you, Shashin, some members of U.S. Cadet and Junior teams in the 1980’s, Peter Zajac, Mark Liu, Jackie Lee, Whitney Ping, Trevor Runyan, Tim Herman (German League player), Misha Kazantsev and members of the U.S. Cadet and Junior Teams from 2001-2007.

There are others, current or moved on to other clubs or colleges, who achieved over 2000, a tier below the above, who achieved what they can or potential to get to the next level; Sylvan Guo, Tomas Fuentes-Afflick, John Springer, Kevin Phung, Stephanie Chow, Derrick Poon, Gabe Reder and Sally Su.

What are your biggest accomplishments as a coach?
If it’s about titles, most recently, as a coach for the 2006-2007 U.S. National Junior Boy’s team, qualifying them to the world final championships in Cairo, Egypt by beating Canada in the North American Championships, which have not happened for many years, and beating a Korean team during team competition in China. Although they were the “B” team, the U.S. junior boys never before beat any Asian (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) team before.

Other accomplishments, I suppose, contributing to the development of students making the National, Olympic or World Championship teams, into these rare levels is very satisfying but my “biggest accomplishments” are happening every day. Whether they are talented or not as gifted, limited by their set of circumstances, witnessing their personal bests as weeks, months and years go by.

I think helping to achieve personal growth, becoming their own persons with principles and values in relationships with their parents, is just as or more important than the awards and recognition they get. A player who has good principles and values tend to work harder, learn faster, take responsibility for their actions, are better prepared to compete and walk the real world path much sooner than later, it goes hand and hand. I don’t think you can separate the two. I get as much excitement or more, when many students who are not as gifted or athletic, achieve levels never thought possible experiencing self-awareness, then lead successful lives beyond sports because of it.

While on this path, I try to bring out the best with what I have to work with. Most players who take up this sport, especially in this country, talent level is low because we lose talented kids at the elementary and middle school levels to other mainstream sports or what is currently popular. Along with non-existent infrastructure and lack of consistent training environment, meeting one’s expectations is difficult, often impossible.

What do you think it takes to be a successful coach?
As I said above, part of the answer is to bring out the best from all regardless of their talent level. Successful coaches are those who learn new skills, flexible enough to change old ways, and able to critically evaluate themselves. Like anything else, getting educated in the arts and sciences of coaching is basic requirement, but there has to be more than being educated in this field and having to be a good player with experience then becoming a coach; most players spend their life trying to become great players, then becomes a coach. It should be the other way.

A successful coach is a coach who over time, not only consistently produces good players and results, but also sets principles and values that defines who we are as peoples.

What do you think Northern California or the US in general needs to improve the level of table tennis?
This is a long one to answer-can’t say it all here.

Northern California has become the region in the country for table tennis. There are more clubs, programs, coaches, players and tournaments happening than anywhere else. We have the numbers and it equates to quality of play. There are other developing regions of activity, Southern California, Chicago area, North West and Portland, Florida and upper East Coast in New York, Maryland, New Jersey and few other pockets in the mid-west but, they haven’t grown as fast and steadily as in Northern California.

This didn’t happen overnight. There are many reasons why we grew here in Northern California, larger than others. One reason has to do with local leadership in this region and the other is more deep in geography, history, world events and what this country is about.

San Francisco Bay Area is known worldwide for it’s liberal policies and governance and a hub for new immigrants from the East. If you look at player demographics, majority of players are first, second and third generation players form foreign countries and predominantly Asian. The Bay Area was a destination for immigrants from Vietnam after the war in the 70’s, and many settled in San Jose area and Southern California. The Tianaman Square incident in 1989 caused many to flee to Hong Kong and Taiwan and then the return of Hong Kong to China in 1999 caused a sudden surge of immigration to the West. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 open the door for Eastern Block countries to immigrate to the U.S. and many settled here in the West. There is a thriving Eastern European community in San Francisco and in Sacramento. In recent years, there has also been a sudden increase in number of Middle Easterners, especially from India due to Hi-Tech business connection with Silicon Valley. So we are blessed with this location and world events. This demographic of foreign influence in our sport is obvious, positive and helped raise the level of play.

The problem is, even with these influences, it is still insignificant if you consider the overall picture of our sport in the country. We should take advantage of any world events that benefits us, Ping-Pong Diplomacy, immigration, recent media exposures, etc., but it should be an addition to good planning and management at the national level. Our sport has been in existence for over 70 years yet we haven’t even established a grassroots infrastructure that is the building block for world-class level.

If you take away the new immigrants, second and third generation players of foreign origin, lost memberships to attrition due to dissatisfaction, apathy, retirements from the sport and even deaths, we may have less than 2000 players in a country of over 300 million people. We shouldn’t be relying on foreign numbers for so many reasons.

What is the most satisfying part of coaching?
In addition to what I said earlier about personal growth, satisfaction or dissatisfaction is part of any endeavor so I don’t do what I do to look for satisfaction. The satisfaction is in the act itself.

What is/are your coaching philosophy/ies?
I do have certain views and philosophies regarding coaching that are different from my peers. This is based on table tennis situation in this country being vastly different from Europe and Asia so approach, methods and priorities should be different. I been to countless coaches seminars, domestic and international, and the main discussions were always of then current high-level techniques. This is fine if you are working with only elite players, but this doesn’t address the solution here. My coaching philosophies are based on developing who and what we have to work with here and for what reason.

Many believe we have lot of talented players in this country capable of reaching world-class level but we don’t. We have some, few, but not a lot in comparison to other countries. Add this to our geographical layout, different priorities, the few talented players we do have are spread across the country and unable to train together, the lack of infrastructure and system to develop these few talented players, we have the situation we have today.

I said earlier, level of talent and number of gifted players are low in this country because talented kids are taken by other popular and mainstream American sports, so this makes it that much harder to teach and produce quality players in a sport that is already difficult to master. So in order to retain and develop what is available, teaching approach, styles and methods must fit the player. If the goal is to bring out the best out of every individual, regardless of the level of talent, to develop a style that connects and fits the individual, then trying to teach the current world-class techniques to all will not work.

Assessing accurately their level of capability, creating an environment of fun, excitement and learning, and having them perform tasks they can handle is extremely important. I see, hear so many coaches trying to teach the current “winning” style to players who are not capable of performing these tasks, diminishing their level of confidence and the fun factor, causing them to quit the sport prematurely.

It’s like painting. I always try to paint the best picture based on my assessment, beliefs and convictions and I like to think the best painting is the ones I’m working on now. Sometimes it doesn’t turnout the way you wanted but you don’t stop painting.