Stay Calm and Ping Pong

On Friday nights in the basement of the gym, one can hear the pitter patter of ping pong balls bouncing across several different tables. The tables are set up from 6:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. for Exeter’s ping pong club, which offers a relief from a week’s worth of the Exeter workload and an opportunity to refine one’s table tennis skills.The club employs a “king of the court” system, in which the winner of each game is able to move up to a more advanced table. This process repeats until one reaches the last table, where the winner is able to remain until he or she is defeated.One of the co-heads of the club, upper Andy Wei, explained the club in more detail. “There used to be a ping pong club at the school when I came as a prep, but it was not very active,” Wei said.Wei and his fellow co-heads, uppers Andrew Poggione and Erick Friis, revived the club to provide Exonians who are interested in ping pong a more fun experience. Today, there are about 15-20 people who flow in and out of the club every year, although none tend to come on a weekly basis.The main purpose of the ping pong club is just to have fun. “For those that join, we mostly are just looking to have fun competitive games of ping pong,” Wei said. “Of course we would love to see improvement among everybody in ping pong, but the club isn’t really much of an instruction club. We mostly just try to have fun.”Although the club is meant to be a form of relaxation for students as well as a way to get away from Exeter’s workload, the club still hosts formal tournaments for their members which include prizes.“We’d like to run bracket tournaments if we have enough people, of course with a little prize money incentive, but it’s mostly just for fun and for something a little more exciting than just the usual king of the hill or rallying with friends,” Wei said.One active member of the ping pong club is prep Darius Kahan. Kahan used to compete in national ping pong tournaments before coming to Exeter. Now that he is at Exeter, Kahan does not have time to compete nationally in ping pong, so he looked to the ping pong club in order to continue his fondness of the sport.“My first impressions were that they were a great group of kids there,” Kahan said. “I enjoyed hanging out with them and refining my ping pong skills.”Kahan said that ping pong club provides a great opportunity for students to learn how to play ping pong under pressure. “The tournaments are just fun light-hearted tournaments that give people who go to the normal ping pong club meetings on Friday another opportunity to play in a more competitive atmosphere. It’s a great way to experience a competitive environment of ping pong instead of the normal laid back club environment and teaches you the ability to play ping pong under pressure,” Kahan said.Prep Dirk Nor also actively participates in the ping pong club. "I play ping pong at home in my basement and really enjoy the activity. I play on occasion in my dorm but when I heard that Exeter had a ping pong club I knew I had to join,” he said. “I love the atmosphere and it's fun to get better at the game. I didn't think that when coming to Exeter I would be improving my table tennis game."