By: Gabriel Nunez, Guest Writer
Many Newman students living in Carocci Hall have come together around the ping pong table on the first-floor lobby this year, and students from all different backgrounds say the new ping pong obsession in their dorm and on campus has helped them meet new people.
Among them is freshman soccer player Christian Rangel, who said that the ping pong table this year has brought people from many different interests together.
“People from different sports have joined in and became friends,” he said.
Several days a week, the first-floor lobby of Carrocci Hall is filled with residents playing in and watching ping pong games. Freshman Sydney Henning, a resident in Carocci Hall, said that she always sees and hears crowds gathered around the table.
“I see them playing ping pong all the time, everytime I walk into the dorm, usually,” she said.
When enough students fill up the lobby, the games can get rowdy. Students say that they can hear the buzz of the ping pong games or shouts of disagreement over calls from their rooms. Often, the crowd gathered around the ping-pong table is big and noisy, said sophomore soccer playerCam Schroeder.
“With all of the soccer guys, it can get pretty rowdy, up to 15 people sitting around the table playing or waiting to play,” he said. “With all the people there, it gets pretty lively.”
Elian Sanchez, a freshman on the soccer team, said that ping pong has helped him make a lot of friends.
“It is a major contributing factor,” he said.
Ping pong has become so popular this year that Newman’s Student Life Department has even started organizing monthly ping pong tournaments in Dugan Library.
The Carrocci Hall ping pong culture is new this year. Last year, the ping pong table was not as unifying as it is this year, say students who lived on campus then. More and more people are coming to the ping pong table to forge friendships.
Deqlan Mitchell, a freshman bowler and champion of the first ping- pong tournament put on by Student Life, is one of the regular players at the Carrocci ping pong table. He said he has made at least five friends around the ping pong table.
“I have met a lot of the soccer team just because of ping pong,” he said.
PHOTO: Courtesy photo, University Relations
