There’s no shame in my game, my ping-pong game, that is. You pick the best players, and I’ll take them, they’re no match for me. Slams, backhands, and aces. I can do it all. Ping pong is my hobby, nay, my obsession. Since 1st grade I have played religiously with my grandmother. I kept the game to myself until junior year when I shared the best game in the world with my classmates. A friend and I began, what we believed, would be simply a campus club for kids to play ping-pong, however the idea transformed itself into a campus-wide domination of students’ time and effort.
It began one day as my friend and I were enjoying a routine ping-pong session. Upon the conclusion of our intensely competitive expression of self (sweat bands and all), he said, “How about a campus ping-pong club?”

I contemplated it for merely a second, and blew it off just to play another round. However, later that evening, as I got distracted from Algebra II homework, the idea of initiating a ping-pong club finally sunk in. I had never thought of ping pong in this way before; it had been a personal hobby. Nonetheless, the next day I met at the Student Center with the friend that proposed the club idea, to explore future possibilities. We contacted people, filled out paper work, and it was official, we had founded the Ping-Pong Club!

What our club developed into was more than we could have imagined. Nearly thirty students attended our first after-school meeting to learn both the fundamentals of the game and perfect their technique and skills; it only grew from there. On a consistent basis, we had an increasing number of kids show up, and play every week after-school on Mondays. No longer am I an “in-the-closet ping-pong champion” but instead a master instructor of the game. I enjoyed offering helpful playing hints to friends more than I anticipated. Not only were they learning from me, but I was learning from them. I learned that if you take a risk and try something new you may fall in love with it. Ping-pong is my pride and I have spread this out to my school community.