Another fun and exciting NATT Teams event is over for 2011. 
The "Arctic Frost Spin" team of Kyle Yan, Zack Gholston, Ralph Stadelman and Karl Augestad all had a great time finishing at 3-4 in the division 9B round robin and 5-6 as a team overall. Alaskan Andy Hutzel was on the team "(Loop) There It Is" with Robert Hodgston, Justin Fine and David Elliott also finished with a team record of 3 wins and 4 losses in their pool.
Individually Alaskan Karl Augestad finished at 17-5 ending up with an 1877 USATT rating increasing 39 points from 1838, Kyle really upped his USATT rating from 1235 to 1631! An adjustment based on his wins over multiple players above his rating. An improvement of nearly 400 points. His win/loss record was 7-14. And Andy's results was 3-14 and he too went up on the losing record up to 1724 from 1689.
I enjoy visiting past teammates, previous competitors and friends from past teams dating back to the 80's Some I see every year when I am able to attend. Great diverse players from Table tennis clubs from New York, New Jersey and west coast plus college teams like Penn State. International players from China, Barbados, Canada, Mexico, Alaska... OK those Alaskans are not from another country. But players and organizers from cities and states across the US came to one of the largest Table Tennis Tournaments in the world. 
This was Kyles first experience at the Teams and he and his teammates had their hands full in division 9. Many close 5 game matches ending up with only 2 point difference from a win to a loss. With more space than usual Kyle's game was focused and exciting. He played farther back from the table during offensive rallies from his opponents. Ralph and I offered coaching insturctions between games as teammates sometimes one player get to take on the opponant before the fellow teammate and can offer some insight on stratigy. Our styles for each of us proved quite different thus we each had to find out our own defense and tacktics that would work. Klye looks forward to attending future teams and tournaments.
FRIDAY DAY 3 of my trip, DAY ONE of competition: On Friday the format starts with a preliminary round where each team is set in a group of teams who plays teams in 1 & 2 divisions above and 1 & 2 divisions below. Thus your results of your teams match up puts you in the Sat & Sun Round robin pool based on the skill level of your team. We started in division 9 and on Friday had a close 4-5 loss against the team just one above us and were fairly well handed by the team 2 above at 5-1. Yet as expected we defeated the 2 teams below by a margin of 5-1 and 5-2 respectively. So we had an opportunity to move up a division if we had edged out that match up against Da Tang 1.
(DRAFT)