Just wanna play ping pong
Alex Florek, an undeclared sophomore, wanted to join the ping pong club. The only problem? There wasn’t one . . . yet.
“I just thought they’d have a ping pong club. And they didn’t have one, and told me to start one,” Florek said.
Logan Skeen, a sophomore in agricultural business, is one of the vice presidents of the club, which he said started about a month ago. Since then, the club has been focused on recruiting members.
They estimated that they had about 80 people who signed up. Around 30 show up to play each week in the upper left gym of the HPER building. They meet at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, and are officially called the Table Tennis Club.
“The main purpose of the club is to relish ping pong,” Florek said. “Everybody’s welcome.”
Some members are more experienced, but there are players of all skill levels there. Members do not even have to know how to play before coming.
“We listen to music and kind of like dance … while playing ping-pong,” Skeen said. He said the environment of the Ping Pong club is relaxed and social.
Jaron Dunford, sophomore in public relations and the club’s contact adviser, said, “It’s a great atmosphere to play ping pong, but even better for meeting people.”
The club plays both by official rules and casually, with casual play taking place during the first half of the club meetings.
“When we’re playing casual we don’t really enforce the rules … we’re just having fun.” Skeen said.
“Usually just mess around for the first hour, half hour, then we set up a little tournament.” Florek said. The rules are followed during the tournaments, especially during the final match.
“We wanna do a ping pong tournament, school-wide, the week after Thanksgiving,” Florek said. They would like to keep the tournament cheap to keep it accessible to more people, he said. The money would go toward things like refreshments and prizes.
“We’ll have bigger prizes. That’s where the sponsors come in,” Florek said. He said he wants to make larger tournaments more regular. His hope is for at least one campus-wide tournament a semester. But he doesn’t plan to stop there, either.
“I was gonna try to call the nation-wide ping-pong league.” Florek said. He wants to see if he could get the winners of the USU tournaments qualified for larger tournaments. He is also going to try to set up tournaments between other universities in Utah.
The club’s main challenge at this point is a lack of funding. Skeen said it is free to join the club unless someone wants a T-shirt, which costs $5.
The T-shirts have a design similar to the Utah Jazz logo, except that it says Ping Pong instead.
“You have to have your own paddle, or you can rent a paddle downstairs for 50 cents,” Skeen said. The club has a few of their own paddles, but not enough for everyone. The club also provides ping pong balls.
“It’s the best club on campus, it’s way fun, and it’s just relaxing after everything you do all day – school, and work,” Skeen said.
In order to raise funds for the tournaments and other activities they have planned, the club is looking for sponsors. The screen printing company that makes their shirts is pitching in, and they also asked Al’s Sporting Goods.
The club must submit a request to the university describing their funding needs before they will be given any money.
Florek said he is hoping the club can get more tables to play on. As it is, the club can’t get any bigger in the space they have.
“If we get bigger and they see that lots of people are doing it and enjoying it, then they’ll get more tables,” he said.
Florek said that he didn’t expect the turn-out the club has gotten.
“We just want to play ping pong, you know,” Florek said.
– melody.campbell@aggiemail.usu.edu