We are in the airport in Warsaw waiting to fly home after a long week. It's 6 am. There were six american kids here who played ther hearts out, and ran into the professional level Euro machine supported by the EBPF. You should note that the entire final 8 was all euro; not one kid from Japan, China, North or South America, the Philipines, or the US. Doesn't that tell you something? The reality is that the level of support and training for the europeans is a model for the rest of the world. Team Euro arrives with coaches, equipment support, training camps for weeks before the event, and year around training and organized competition. They are focused, as individual national teams and as team euro, on one thing: total dominance. The American kids arrived with their cues and jet lag. They got at most a couple of hours on the tables before the matches started. The Polish girl who won qualified for the tournament as a walk on the day before it started, and she went through the field undefeated. The boy's side finalists were both polish kids. One of the polish organizers said to me "The US has NASA and can put a man on the moon. Why can't you organize support for junior pool?" It's a good question, isn't it?
All that said, we have the talent and desire, and just need to bring some focus and energy to staying competitive as the europeans raise the bar again and again. Our kids, with the same level of support that the Euros have, can play with any other kids in the world. Before you criticize what our kids accomplished, take a look at how much time and energy you spent helping them get to where they did, and ask yourself, why can't we do a better job supporting our kids in international play?
