by ITTF

Notably, the key areas of learning are governance, finance, working with partners, human resources, organising competitions, marketing and promotion plus values.

“With the release of the ITTF Administration Course, ITTF is again fuelling the development of table tennis and empowering all National Associations, as part of ITTF DNA “Developing National Associations”. With ITTF soon to have every country on earth as a member, the first International Sports Federation to achieve this milestone, our focus turns to increasing the quality and technical capacities of our national associations and this administration course is a big step in the right direction. We congratulate our Development Department on another great initiative for our sport.” Thomas Weikert, ITTF President

Notably the course is available on line at ITTF.com/DNA . It is free for all. The course is available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

“The ITTF has till now focused on coach, umpire and referee education, as well as player development pathways. The next challenge was to work on administration as the backbone to the success of all programmes through ITTF DNA “Developing National Associations” and we are very proud to release this self-paced, online administration course in four languages that can be done as a whole or targetted to the needs of the individuals within each association’s administration.  Special congratulations to Michael Brown who worked tirelessly on this project for the last two years using IOC and World best practices.” Glenn Tepper, ITTF Deputy Chief Executive Office, responsible for ITTF Development, Education and Training Departments

For the course, ITTF is proud to announce Stag as the official partner. They will provide incentives for national associations to encourage their executive and members in general, to complete the course. An equipment package will be provided to the first national association to have 10, 50 and 100 users complete the entire course. Each national association can only win one of these equipment packages, which include six tables and nets, 80 rackets and eight gross of balls.

In addition to the incentives for national associations, ITTF is providing memorabilia prizes to each individual who is first to complete each of the seven modules, as well as the first individual to complete the entire course. Once again, each individual is only entitled to one of these prizes, with a total of eight prizes on offer.

“The concept for the ITTF Administration Course began with structuring the course as a face-to-face learning, with a manual as the key resource. However, halfway through preparing the content for the course and the way in which various improvements are being made in the technology world, it was decided to move the course to an online portal. These seven key learning areas help to form a well-structured table tennis association and through undertaking the learning from this course, I am confident that associations around the world can take their administration to a more professional level.” Michael Brown, ITTF & Africa-Oceania Development Co-ordinator

So, in the words of Michael Brown: what are you waiting for? Start studying, and improve the ways in which you can administrate the sport we all love!