Texas Wesleyan's Mark Hazinski is competing in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.  This is Mark's second trip to the Games; he won a bronze medal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2007.  Mark will be sharing his experience through this blog.  Check back here for daily updates.

Wednesday, October 19:

This morning I played the last match in my qualifying group against Pavel Oxemendi from Cuba, to see who would advance to the single elimination rounds. It was a very close and intense match, but I was able to pull it out 4-2 to advance. In the first round of the single elimination I drew Dexter St Louis from Trinidad and Tobago. He is a very crafty veteran who has played professionally in France for many years. Unfortunately, he played really well, and I was never really able to find my timing. I had a whole lot of trouble receiving his serves. He defeated me 4-1 to knock me out of the men's singles event. Even though I was disappointed I could not make it further in singles, I thought I played really well and gained a lot of experience during this year's Pan American Games. I think it was a very good competition to prepare me for the Olympic trials coming up in February. Now it is time to get out of competition mode and back to school mode!
--Mark

Tuesday, October 18:

Today was the start of the men's singles event here at the Pan American Games. The event begins with round robin groups of four people, with the top 2 players advancing to the round of 16. My first match in the group was against Lin Ju from the Dominican Republic. He was the Pan Am Champion in 2003 and the 2nd seed this year. He was too strong for me and defeated me 4-1. My second match was against Luis Mejia from El Salvador, and I played a really solid match and was able to beat him 4-0. Tomorrow morning I will play against Pavel Oxamendi from Cuba to see who will advance 2nd out of the group to the round of 16. Time to get a good night sleep to prepare for tomorrow.
--Mark

Sunday, October 16:

This morning we played against Chile in a must-win match to advance out of the group and into the quarterfinals. We played our best team match of the tournament and won 3-0. Timothy Wang of Team USA started things off in the first match against Felipe Olivares and played great to win 3-1 against the Junior Pro Tour champion. The second match was between Fan Yiyong of Team USA and Alejandro Rodriguez. It was an extremely close match with every game going to deuce, but Fan pulled it out 3-1 to put the USA up 2-0. The doubles match was between Timothy Wang and myself against Alejandro Rodriguez and Andres Carlier. We started off well winning the first two games, but Chile hung in there to tie it up at two games all. In the fifth game we started well and were able to keep the lead to win and put Team USA into the quarterfinals. We were a bit unlucky to draw the #1 seed Brazil in the quarterfinals, who are the heavy favorites to win the team event. We were outmatched, and Brazil beat us 3-0 as the only close match we played was doubles. Anyways, I felt our team performed really well, and if we would have beaten Argentina on the first day, we would have had a much better draw in the quarterfinals and a better chance to advance to the medal rounds. Tomorrow we have a day off to recuperate and prepare for the singles event that begins on Tuesday.
--Mark

Saturday, October 15:

Today was our first day of competition, and we competed against Argentina, who was the top seed in our group and the second seed overall. Fan Yiyong from Team USA started the first match against Liu Song, who is one of the best players in Pan America, and lost 3-0 even though he had a good chance to win the second game. The second match was between Timothy Wang from Team USA against Pablo Tabachnick. Tim played very well and won the match 3-1. The third match was doubles with Timothy Wang and myself against Pablo Tabachnick and Gaston Alto. We won a very hard fought match 3-2 to put Team USA up 2 matches to 1. The fourth match was Liu Song against me, and I had a very good chance in the first game. I was up 10-9, but I wasn't able to pull it out, and he won the next two games fairly easy to tie up the team match 2-2. The fifth and final match was between Fan Yiyong and Gaston Alto. Fan started off slow and found himself losing the first two games. He kept fighting hard and won the next two games to force a fifth and final game. Alto started really well and was up 9-5, but Fan kept his cool and took a 10-9 lead to have match point. Unfortunately, Alto came back to win the match 12-10 in the fifth game of the fifth match. It was pretty heartbreaking to have such a good chance to beat the #2 seed, but it showed we are playing well, and hopefully we can keep it up to beat Chile tomorrow to advance second out of the group.
--Mark

Friday, October 14:

My first day at the Pan American Games was definitely a good one. We had a training session in the morning at the table tennis venue and it was a very nice facility, the only bad thing was that it was over an hour bus ride from the village. After the training session we found out our draw for the team event and we will be playing against the 2nd seed Argentina and the 10th seed Chile. We are currently seeded 7th in the team event. The top two finishers in the group will advance to the quarterfinals on Monday. We will play Argentina tomorrow at 4 pm and Chile on Sunday at 10 am. Tonight we were able to attend the opening ceremonies, and it was an incredible experience, I had goosebumps the whole time. The organizing committee really went above and beyond what I was expecting.
--Mark