Sorry, no more Ping Pong Club

Written by Matthew Moore

Five students founded Ping Pong Club in 2008, yet the club has become non-existent within two years. Seniors Connor Goldstein, Kolbe Cathcart, Chase Glenister, Alex Tyler and Jerry Gacusan jump-started the club in their junior year so that they would have an activity to do at lunch. Goldstein said they chose ping pong basically because “it was the most feasible activity”.

The club started out strong this year. At Maze Day, over forty people signed up at their table to join the ping pong club. At the first meeting, more than thirty people showed up, including a number of freshmen. The club hosted meetings every Wednesday in history teacher David Stephenson’s classroom and appeared to be off to a great second year.

However, as the year progressed, attendance became worse and worse, dropping from thirty members to twenty members to then ultimately twelve members. The situation was not helped by the fact that several of the freshmen members of the club offended Mr. Stevenson by calling him “Steve-O” which led to Mr. Stevenson kicking the Ping Pong Club out of the classroom for good. The lack of permanent home, coupled with the poor attendance, was cited by members of the club as the ultimate reason why the Ping Pong club failed.

However, hope for a new club remains. Goldstein said he would consider restarting the Ping Pong club if enough members came back to the group on a regular basis. Although the likelihood of this occurring in the second semester is extremely low, there is always hope that someone will start a new ping pong club next year, even if the original members won’t be around to see it.