40 DAY COUNTDOWN TO THE 2014 YOUTH OLYMPIC GAMES by Lily Yip US Junior Team Training in China and Korea Lily Zhang and Krish Avvari will be representing the United States in the 2nd Summer Youth Olympics Games in Nanjing, China on August 16-28. As a part of National Team programs, the YOG Team and I as coach, travelled to Shanghai, China for training at the 2014 ITTF Youth Olympic Games Training Camp for ten days. This camp was World Class and we were fortunate to have World Champions Jorgen Person from Sweden, Wang Li Qing and Liu Guo Zheng from China and the famous Chinese Coach, Li Xiao Dong leading the camp. The Chinese Training partners were all members of the Chinese National Youth Team . After ten days of training, Lily Zhang and I participated in the “Korea Open”. Lily Zhang had a great tournament beating a few world class players from Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Of
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course all of the credit goes to the USATT, CTTA and ITTF for a great training camp in Shanghai , China before the tournament. Lily Zhang performed very well and made it to the final in Under 21 Girls event. After the Korean Open, we continued our journey and left for Japan to participate at the Japan Open. Unfortunately, Lily Zhang got sick during the tournament and didn’t play well. After Japan we returned to the US and Lily may not had enough consistent training at home and she didn’t play very well in the US Open. On July 20, the US Team returned to Korea for the 2014 ITTF Korea Junior & Cadet Open in Yeosu, Korea . Prachi