My Table Tennis Experience in Poland

May 26, 2021

In 2020 I went to Poland to improve my game. Since July 2020 I am training at the Olympic Training facility in Drzonkow. The training facility is located not far away from Germany so German players visit to play sparing, some of our players play also in German leagues.

I live in a dorm, go to school, and train. I have a great coach Lucjan Blaszczyk. I train five days a week, two times a day. On the weekends we have tournaments or leagues. I really like it here because the training helped me improve a lot and the environment is really great. The drill that I think helped me the most is the middle side. I think that it helped me with my footwork and technique. Every Thursday we play matches with different styles of play and that helps us improve our game. At the facility, we have everything we need for training and to help us relax. The thing that we do here a lot is physical training; it helps us with our footwork and our muscle memory.

We have a lot of tournaments or league plays on the weekends. Right now, I play for the second and third league for my club which is called ZKS Palmarnia Zielona Gora. In the third league, I played eight matches. I won all of my single and doubles matches. In the second league, I had played three times. I won all my single matches and only lost one doubles match. While in Poland I played few state championships for mini cadet and cadet, I won those. I also had the opportunity to play the qualification tournament called Grand Prix for the Polish National Championship. This is different than in the USA. In Polish National Championship can play only 64 best kids. Tough competition because there are almost 700 kids in my age group. I qualified with place 17-24. I beat the 3 seed in my group but I got unlucky after the group stage. I played Mateusz Gawlas I did not like his playing style. The Polish National Championship for mini cadet was a really good tournament for me. I won my first match at 3:0. My second match was really tough but I managed to win 3:1. In the round of 16, I beat the 8 seed 3:2. After that match I had to face the 1 seed it was a really close match but I got to win. In the semifinals, I come up short and lost 2:3.

I am coming back to the US in June and I am excited to participate in tournaments in New York and Las Vegas before I return for training to Drzonkow to work on improving my game.