Month: June 2026

The Verdict: If You Build It, They Will Ping

Moving the tournament to Beloit, Wisconsin, was a massive gamble. The 2024 Regional Championships in Ohio attracted a respectable 130 players, and we worried that traveling further into Wisconsin—which isn’t even technically in the USATT Midwest Region—would be a bridge too far.

As it turned out, our geographic exile worked like a charm. It acted as a magnet for players further west in Minnesota and Missouri who finally had a tournament within striking distance. We filled a staggering 92% of all available spots and reeled in 219 players, completely shattering our Ohio numbers.

Our success relied on a three-pronged marketing assault:

1. Omnipong: We listed the event on this venerable, time-tested platform officially adopted by USATT, which immediately caught the eyes of dedicated out-of-state players.
2. Vlad Farcas: Vlad blasted his network of junior players, reminding them this was their absolute last chance to secure vital national ranking points before the US Nationals, which can only be earned at one of the 8 official Regional Championships.
3. My Inescapable Email Avalanche: I launched a relentless email campaign. AWS Simple Email Service actually denied my application because their AI based system flagged me as a spam menace about to destroy their spotless reputation. Undeterred, I manually blasted emails out in batches of 400—initially twice a month, escalating to once a week during the final five-week countdown.

The strategy worked. Illinois sent a small army of 108 players, and Wisconsin defended its home turf with 30. The rest came from practically every corner of the map:

• The Neighbors: Minnesota (16), Missouri (12), Michigan (6), Ohio (5), Iowa (2), North Dakota (2), and Kansas (1).
• The Long-Distance Travelers: California (15), Texas (6), New Jersey (4), North Carolina (3), Colorado (3), New York (2), Georgia (1), and Arkansas (1).
• The Ultimate Frequent Flyer: Literally one player from France.

Out of 219 registered competitors, we had only 7 no-shows. A few others fought so hard on Saturday that their bodies went on strike, forcing them to withdraw on Sunday. All in all, the turnout was legendary.

With New Venues Come New Terrors

Every tournament director knows the thrill of a new venue. It brings fresh energy, new possibilities, and a buffet of existential dread. Going into this, my mind was racing with questions:

• Will the equipment arrive before the tournament ends?
• Will I have to set up 24 table tennis tables entirely by myself?
• Will the venue’s Wi-Fi be fast enough to support modern smartphones, or will it reduce our players with older phones to tears?
• Will the weather cooperate or will be too hot to play?
• Will enough players sign up to cover the expenses?

Spoiler alert: We survived. But the journey involved battling corporate bureaucracy, defying the laws of physics, and dodging a localized apocalypse. Here is how it actually went down.

The Great Penske Paperwork Protocol

The tournament equipment lives with Ed Hogshead at a storage facility on the rural fringes of Rockford, Illinois—about 20 miles south of our venue in Beloit, Wisconsin. My logistical master plan was simple: rent a massive truck from Penske, play truck driver for a day, and make a few quick rounds.

However, Beloit Memorial High School lacks a loading dock or a hydraulic lift. Naturally, I requested a truck with a liftgate to save my spine from imminent destruction. Penske’s system promptly informed me that liftgates are strictly reserved for Real Businesses™.

Not to be deterred, I confidently filled out their commercial business application. Apparently, running a major regional table tennis tournament makes me a “small-time operation,” because my application was unceremoniously denied and my reservation deleted.

I didn’t even realize I had been ghosted until two weeks before the tournament when I called to adjust the dates. A lovely representative reinstated it, only for the Penske automated rejection overlords to cancel it again a few days later. This triggered a 30-minute therapy session with the Penske finance department where I literally recited my entire life history in the table tennis industry. The verdict? They finally agreed to rent me a truck, but absolutely no liftgate for you.

Ed Hogshead and the Physics-Defying Truck Bridge

I arrived at the storage facility just after 9:00 AM on a day that felt approximately as hot as the surface of the sun. Ed greeted me with the ultimate motivational speech: “This truck isn’t going to work. It doesn’t have a liftgate.”

Driven by sheer adrenaline and denial, I told Ed I’d do whatever it took, even if we had to drag everything up the steep ramp by hand. Ed was recently fresh off a hip replacement surgery, so he was playing the role of Lead Architect while his hired helper, Antonio—a man possessing roughly twice my physical strength—and I provided the muscle.

Our mission was to transfer four massive 4x4x3 ft gray containers packed with heavy steel barrier parts from Ed’s truck into my truck. They weighed roughly a metric ton each. Lifting them was out of the question.

Fortunately, Ed holds a CDL and possesses a legendary supply of “trucker tricks.”

• Trick #1: Use the liftgate on his truck to form a floating bridge between the two vehicles, allowing us to roll the containers across with a pallet jack.
• Trick #2: Use the liftgate geometry to stack the containers on top of each other, saving space and sparing me from making multiple trips.

The bridge concept was flawless, until reality reminded us that our truck beds were completely different heights. Time for Trick #3. Ed calmly backed his truck onto a couple of wooden pallets to raise its rear end.

As you can see in the first photo, we were still not level. That’s when I remembered my truck was “fancy.” It featured a dashboard button that electronically adjusted the rear suspension height. After a tedious 10-minute ballet of reversing and micro-adjustments—which I won’t bore you with, though I did learn some excellent hand-signal choreography from Ed—the bridge was perfectly level. We rolled the containers right in.

Next up was preparing the 24 heavy tables for the journey. Ed, playing the role of strict foreman, made me manually screw in the adjustment feet on every single table to prevent them from unscrewing and getting lost in transit. This pedantic exercise severely slowed us down during loading, but it did give me an ominous realization: this would be the first tournament in history where I’d have to bring a spirit level just to get the playing surfaces flat.

Once that was done, we had to push those 24 behemoths up a steep ramp in grueling 84-degree heat. It took Antonio and me another miserable hour, fueled entirely by frequent water breaks and sheer willpower. I walked away with a fantastic, glowing sunburn. Antonio walked away incredibly angry about his severely delayed lunch schedule, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

Fast, Furious, and Fractured Weather

By 1:30 PM, I inhaled two sandwiches and took the wheel. Driving a 26-foot box truck through rural Illinois is a peaceful, albeit slow, experience. I cautiously pushed the beast all the way up to 50 mph. I can safely report that it does not possess the acceleration of my Tesla Model 3. In fact, the real-time fuel gauge indicated that during acceleration, it was chugging diesel at a terrifying rate of 4 miles per gallon.

I was exactly one mile from the venue when my phone blasted a Severe Weather Alert: Shelter in Place Immediately.

I furiously backed the truck up to the high school receiving door just as the sky turned a catastrophic shade of apocalyptic gray. We managed to throw a few tables inside before the heavens absolutely opened up. For the next hour, as the winds howled, I sat inside the school genuinely wondering if my rented Penske truck was still parked outside or if it had been airborne-delivered back to Rockford.

We maximized our storm shelter time by measuring and taping out the courts. Once the storm downgraded to a miserable, depressing drizzle, we went back out to finish the job. Because we didn’t have a liftgate, we had to unpack the heavy barrier parts from those massive gray containers in small batches while they were still inside the truck, eventually rendering the containers light enough to lift down.

It was a grueling process, but we were saved by an absolute cavalry of volunteers from Visit Beloit who showed up to help us brave the elements. Not pictured is Brian the high school administrator who let us inside and helped with unloading too.

Friday, June 12th: Venue Preparation Day

Friday was all about setup efficiency. I was joined again by a great crew: Matthew Bosen, Drew Pennington, Terri White, and Celestino Ruffing. Our first massive task was assembling 300 barriers to fully enclose each of our 19 by 38 feet courts. Thanks to a coordinated assembly line, we knocked it out in just under two hours.

With the perimeter secure, we tackled the rest of the checklist:

• Laying out the remaining 14 courts: Getting the initial spacing perfect.
• The Heavy Lifting: Matthew B., Roy W., and Celestino moved the heavy tables into the exact center of each court.
• The Squeaky Clean Crew: Savannah Schindler, Taylor Stuehler, and I spent 45 grueling minutes washing the tables. It took so long because we had to aggressively rub down the surfaces to remove stubborn scuff marks. By the end of it, I was completely exhausted.
• The Net Crew: Savannah, Taylor, and Kristen Ward teamed up to install all 24 nets across the venue.
• The Leveling Boss: My ominous premonition came true. Armed with my spirit level, I spent an hour crawling around to level all 24 tables. Because of those adjustment feet, I had to repeatedly lift the heavy tables with my back just to screw them in. By the end of that hour, my back was seriously starting to hurt.
• Barriers, Chairs, and Black Holes: Roy and Kristen Ward positioned the barriers around the courts, while Savannah, Taylor, and others set up player and spectator chairs in the alleys. We also used blue plastic barrier sheets to cover the holes in the retractable bleachers, creating a defense mechanism to stop errant balls from vanishing into the bleacher abyss.

The Wi-Fi Whisperers

During the chaos, high school IT guys Matthew Sherman and Kevin Tippelt arrived to grant us access to the local public Wi-Fi. In classic tech fashion, it didn’t work the first time, or the second. But on the third attempt, we finally connected.

Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we wrapped up the entire venue preparation by 3:30 PM. The stage was set.