If you ever walk through the Wilkinson Center on Clubs Night, you are bound to see people playing ping pong, or what they call 'table tennis.' Ping pong Club President Josh Arment says you don't have to be a pro player to join in.
“You can come never having picked up a paddle before, or you can come being a sanctioned tournament player at the United States Table Tennis Association,” says Josh. “Some people are looking to train, and other people are looking to just come and hit with their date, for example.”
Vice President Jacqueline Miller says, “I think there’s a lot of technique to it. It is really kind of fascinating to learn how to return different techniques and stuff. So, for me, that’s what’s fascinating about it. I could just play it all day long.”
Josh shares his favorite aspect of the game.
“So what I personally like about table tennis is all the different play styles and seeing how those play styles match up. So, for example, I might be better than you, and you might be better than somebody else, but that somebody else might be better than me if you see what I’m saying.” Josh continues, “So because of that system of matching up play styles, it keeps table tennis more uncertain than most sports as far as what the outcome is going to be.”
In fact, Josh tells me that intramurals will start up next semester.
“So the first ping pong intramurals will be February 8th, I believe. We'll start running some table tennis intramurals through the intramurals office so we won’t have to deal with all the ins and outs of running a tournament,” he says.
“We have a lot of really good players here, so it will be really fun to do that,” Jacqueline adds.