Ping Pong Brings Crowd For Interest Meeting

Mathew Biadun | News-Editor

Club President Fake Feltault stands front, fourth from right. Vice President Taavi Veltheim stands behind him, to the right.

4/17/2026 - The year isn't out yet! A new club held their interest meeting yesterday, bringing Eastern students together to talk all about one thing. Ping Pong! The club was started by two Juniors from. President Jake Feltault is a Junior majoring in History, and Taavi Veltheim, a junior majoring in Criminology, serve as President and Vice President. The core of the club originated at Occum, where both students hold the same positions in the RHA.

At Occum, many students got together to hold ping-pong tournaments, playing casually and competitively against one another. Earlier this week the tournament became more official, inviting other students to win a 40" television as a prize. The strong turnout at that event motivated them to bring together these students, and others, to create a campus-wide ping pong club.

Though the club may be new, the pair has put significant time into thinking it out. Veltheim had created an extensive Excell sheet, known as 'The Ping Pong Spreadsheet', categorizing player games, creating statistics, and keeping score of Occum's table tennis matches thus far. This semester alone, the spreadsheet had over 400 games recorded.

If one thing is in doubt, it is not the passion.

About fifteen students came to the interest meeting, including one minor campus celebrity, who broke their angle sledding down Occum, and got the activity banned from the hill as a result. Apart from discussing the goals of the club, the most significant point of discussion was funding. Ping pong tables cost about $300-500 apiece, and the club is further limited, as compared to the approximately $5,000~ per semester an ordinary club is allowed to receive from the Budget and Management (BAM) Committee of the Student Government Association (SGA), a new club is only allowed $1000 per semester, for their first year.

The club hopes to gradually purchase more tables. In the meantime, they discussed going to different dorms to play, playing with one or two tables at a time at the start, or, transforming ordinary tables into ping-pong tables.

Fifteen is a strong showing at an interest meeting. To become a new club, their club constitution will first have to pass by BAM, before moving onto a confirmation vote by the SGA Senate.