Kady Bell
Staff Writer
University of La Verne students competed in singles and doubles games to win prizes awarded by the Campus Activities Board in honor of the first Ping Pong Tournament held in the Student Center Tuesday night.
Campus Activities Board Director Chip West passed the idea for the tournament on to junior Kenny Colby, games and recreation chair, because students frequent the Student Center to play rounds of Ping Pong on a daily basis.
“The tournament was something CAB had wanted to do from the beginning,” Colby said.
“Throughout the day many students stop by the Student Center to take a break and play some ping pong, so we decided to cater to those students who show interest,” he said.
Doubles winners Sunny Samuel and Josh Martin, who was also the singles winner, received new ping pong paddles and will be awarded trophies once they are engraved, but West said most of the students who signed up for the event had come to compete and to determine who the best player was, not to win prizes.
The tournament was meant to achieve a simple purpose.
“We just hoped to provide the students with an extracurricular event that was enjoyable and entertaining,” Colby said.
Wendy Schwartz, activities board chair, also said holding the tournament brought students who shared an interest in the sport together on campus.
“The main goal of the event was to provide a little friendly competition to an already favorite past time of many students and to give people something fun to do as members of the ULV community,” Schwartz said.
West predicted that the event would draw a large crowd, and was right on target.
Thirty-two students signed up to participate in the singles tournament and 11 teams signed up to participate in the doubles tournament.
“Ping pong is one of our most popular activities at the Student Center; we average about 60 people a day,” West said.
West also said CAB might look into participating in next year’s Association of College Unions International Competition, which will be held at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Winners of a billiards and ping pong tournament would be sent to the nationals as representatives of ULV.
Only a small number of women attended the tournament, but West said four signed up to participate in the games and that many play ping pong in the Student Center every day.
Melissa Lau, a senior journalism major, was one of five women at the tournament among about 30 men. She said she attended the event to watch the games and to support Martin, her roommate.
“It’s an exhibition of ping pong talent bordering on superfluous levels of skill and dexterity,” Lau jokingly said, as she watched the games.
And many of the men at the tournament agreed that they had come for a dose of competitive fun.
Kaloyan Stankov, a sophomore computer science major, lost the doubles game he participated in, but said he had been up against tough competition.
“It was a fun game, we played with people we knew,” Stankov said in reference to opponents Seth Shelton and Duncan Car.
“It was interesting because we were making fun of each other the whole time, and they tend to win, so it wasn’t unexpected,” he said.
Shelton, a freshman athletic training major, said he decided to participate in the tournament for a little friendly fun as well.
“I like playing ping pong,” Shelton said. “It’s a lot of fun for me.”
The next games and recreation event will be a Local Area Network party on March 31 in the AAIC building, which was newly named Leo Hall.
Students will be able to play games with and/or against each other by bringing their computers and Ethernet cables and plugging them into a network created especially for the party.
Kady Bell can be reached at rzezna65@yahoo.com.
Journalism operations manager at the University of La Verne. Production manager and business manager of the Campus Times.