That’s right, y’all! Just like it says on my license plate and just like Charlie says after whoopin’ some a$$, I smashed on fools at last weekend! For those of you who don’t know, I’m really into table tennis. This past weekend there was a Power Pong™ tournament at the Los Caballeros Sports Park. It was my first time to “Los Cab” (as the locals call it) and man, it’s HUGE! I had to go through multiple buildings and pass by 2 pools to get to the gymnasium where they were having the tournament.

  Once I got there, I had a strange & uncommon feeling come over me – excitement! Normally, when a tournament is not in San Diego, I get extremely nervous! But not this time! To make things even more comfortable, I got much encouragement & guidance from my coaches and 8 other players & friends who came up from the club I play at in San Diego. Five months of training 4–5 days a week had me eager to show my stuff in a tournament.

  And showed my stuff I did! I entered into two events at the tournament: U1400 and U1550. What “U1400″ means is that I only compete against players who have a “rating” of 1400 or lower. This allows newer competitors to play against people of a certain general skill level as opposed to the “open” category. (Can you guess which ratings people can have for that?) My current rating with the USATT is 1394. Given that, I picked an event around my level and one higher (to push myself).

  The first event, under 1400, wasn’t too hard until the end, since it had 3 people that were new to competitions. The fearsome beast of a  competitor (in the picture to the left) waiting for me in the final round had a 5 person support team! In addition to his coach advising him, he had 3 cheerleaders and his aunt was the score keeper. I was a little annoyed when they would cheer before the rally was over—because they didn’t think I would return the awesome shot their boy wonder just made—but I still came out on top! First place! But here’s the bittersweet part about table tennis victories: How many of my friends are going to give me the same amount of props when they find out that the person I beat for the trophy was a chubby cheeked, cute kid? (The merciless ones, that’s who!)

  The 2nd event, under 1550, was much harder. Not only did I have to face a guy who I normally lose to at the Santa Monica Table Tennis tournaments, I had to face 2 guys better than him in the playoffs. This time, I defeated all grown men in the playoffs (as opposed to kids who are really good). But alas, despite great coaching, I lost in the end. So that means that in the end, I entered 2 events and won 2 trophies! 1st & 2nd place! Very niiiice!

  Before this post, the people who got the picture message to the right didn’t have the benefit of this lengthy explanation. And without it, the conversations went a little something like this:

Friend: Wow! You got two trophies?!  
DS2: Yup! 1st and second place!
Friend: What?! 1st and 2nd place? Did you have to play yourself in the finals?
DS2: Yeah. It was difficult, but in the end I lost – to myself. 
Friend: I imagine you like Forrest Gump playing himself, haha!