Former RP national coach to mentor NMI ping pong team

With the 2006 Micronesian Games just around the corner, Marianas Amateur Table Tennis Association president Steve Lim is not taking any chances and will be enlisting former Philippine national men’s team coach Rowell “Jet” Yatco.

Lim was in Manila last month for business and found time to meet with Yatco and offered him the coaching position of the CNMI National Table Tennis Team.

Lim said Yatco currently is coach of his alma mater’s high school and elementary table tennis teams. Lim is a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University.

In the 2005 Palau South Pacific Mini Games, Lim served as coach of Su Yong Dong, Lin Ying Ching, and Budhi Gurung and guided the troika to a bronze-medal finish in the team competition.

As far as next year’s Micronesian Games is concerned Lim said he is planning of using the second leg of the Marianas Friendship Table Tennis Tournament between Saipan and Tinian as a qualifying tournament for the national team selection.

“The team will probably be the same, reinforced with our excellent Tinian players. Given the challenge of Guam and Kiribati for the men’s teams, it would really be important to have the strongest possible team with more players this time around,” he said. “My idea is to automatically qualify the top five players of the Marianas Friendship Tournament as the Micronesian Games selection—assuming they fulfill their residency eligibility—and have two more to serve as alternates. At this point it is highly unlikely that we can field a competitive women’s team for the Micronesian Games.”

Lim also revealed that during the team’s side trip to Manila after their successful campaign in Palau in August, they were able to play a series of matches against the Philippines’ training team for the upcoming Southeast Asian Games in Manila.

“Too bad the Philippines doesn’t really have a global reputation in table tennis, because it has good players. Let me put it this way, the Philippines’ top male players, and probably its female players as well, would be on top of the Pacific islands rankings, and probably rank as high as Australia and New Zealand,” he said.

Lim didn’t supply the results of their “scrimmage” with the RP training team, but said Su, Chen, and Gurung pitted their talents against Antonio “Gigi” Aguinalde, Henberd Ortalla, Harold Baring, Isaias Seronio, and Richard Gonzales.

Aguinalde is the coach of the Philippine National Table Tennis Team, Ortalla and Baring are both from the University of Santo Tomas, Seronio hails from Bacolod and is a varsity player of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, while Gonzales is a member of the country’s national team and is enlisted in the Philippine Army. Lim said the Philippine team trains two sessions a day, six times a week.