Beer Pong: Dartmouth

Rick Reilly recently wrote an article for ESPN about what he calls ‘Beer Pong.’ I do not understand how you can write an article about pong and get it completely wrong. He should have begun his article with the history of pong. Pong was invented in the 1950’s at a small college in Hanover, New Hampshire. Legend has it that two fraternity brothers were playing an afternoon game of ping pong, while simultaneously drinking beers. One player put his beer down on the table to serve, the opposing player accidentally returned the shot into his beer and said, “Drink it.” And thus pong was born.

The game of pong with paddles is fairly simple. It’s basically ping pong, but instead of trying to get your opponent to miss, you are trying to sink his cups. The game consists of a series of rallies in which players hit the ball back and forth high into the air to give the ball a better chance of sinking the cup. Pong is played on a table the same size, or slightly bigger than a regulation ping pong table. Beruit is generally played on smaller, shorter tables. The standard small game of pong is played with 14 10 oz. cups of beer, 7 on each side of the table in a shrub formation. The larger standard game is played with 22 cups of beer, 11 on each side of the table in a shrub formation. Beer is never thrown out. If you cannot finish your beer, you must grab the nearest trashcan, pull the trigger and then consume the beer. The inevitable ‘boot and rally.’ If you think throwing a ball into a cup is difficult, try returning a spin serve high into the air so it lands in a cup that is 10 feet away while you are drunk. Pong requires good footwork and finesse. Athletes are generally pretty good at pong because of their superior hand-eye coordination.

Over time, Pong traveled to colleges across the United States and at some point lost the paddles. The game that does not involve paddles is called Beruit and requires far less skill and stamina. If you venture to Dartmouth for a weekend of fun, you will find that paddles are required if you want to play Pong. In fact, I’ve seen fights break out in fraternity basements at Dartmouth when unknowing visitors attempt to throw the ball. Pong is not just something to do at Dartmouth, it is the thing to do. If you walk into any fraternity or sorority basement at Dartmouth, you will find between four and ten pong tables, depending on the size of the basement. The Greek culture revolves around the world of Pong. Many house traditions were created based on Pong. For example, each house has their own rules for pong. The general rules are the same, but each house has subtle differences that they enforce and take immense pride in. At Psi U, you can bounce the ball off your chest to give yourself an easier shot. At Chi Gam, if the ball hits a cup you can ‘slam’ it back. At some houses the ball is playable off the ceiling, at others off the wall. If you get skunked, some houses will make you chug a large ladle of liquor.

Reilly attempts to make it seem tolerable that people sometimes play with water. Again, I’ve seen fights break out when people attempted to play with water instead of beer. That is not allowed. The only time Pong with water is acceptable is if it is played by underage freshman at a substance free dorm. Freshman have not logged the hours necessary to compete with the upper class men, so even if they somehow managed to get on a table, it is very unlikely that they will win to continue playing. This means that they cannot get drunk while playing Pong and will be reduced to playing dice with upper class men that are too drunk to play Pong competitively. For this reason, some freshmen choose to improve their skills during off time in their dorms with water. However, when I was a freshman, we had water on the tables just in case campus security showed up, and had the beer on the side where it would be chugged at the appropriate times. I suspect most freshman still do this. Because, it is a drinking game after all. And by definition, the point of a drinking game is to get drunk.

I could go on and on about Pong, but for now this will do. I just had to clarify Reilly’s inadequate description of Pong. To insult the game of Pong is to insult the life of a Dartmouth student.