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![The ping pong club was successfully founded by Alan Jian and Michael Xiong in 2019 to build upon their similar interest and bring attention to a lesser-known sport, ping pong club public relations officer Alan Jian said in a Zoom interview.
“I often play ping pong with my family,” Jian said. “I just have some fun and some time away from my screen just to be moving a little bit, especially during quarantine.”
Jian said the ping pong club is not a well-known club at HHS since it was only created a year ago, and is still in the process of expanding to the student community.
“I was one of the founders of this club,” senior Michael Xiong, vice president of the ping pong club said in a Zoom interview. “We actually started applying to this club in our sophomore year. The first time, we failed, and the second time we succeeded.”
Xiong also mentioned that although the strength of the club is the free play, quarantine has forced officers to focus more on media videos in relation to ping pong in order for more students to learn about the club.
“I [have] met several people who play ping pong,” Senior James Jian, the ping pong club president said in a Zoom interview. “Many of them actually play really well, and play competitively. I just feel like the school lacks some kind of ping pong culture and there's literally no space for people who play ping pong.”
In order to assemble and for more people to experience what ping pong is about, James Jiang said he found that he and other officers, along with his friends, contacted teachers to be advisors for the club and then had to gather different equipment.
Xiong said he was surprised when James Jian told him he was going to create the club.
“I know Monta Vista and a bunch of other schools nearby that all have this club,” Xiong said, “and apparently, we're missing this, which I think is a really important cultural element.”
Xiong also said there isn’t much that can be done during this period of the pandemic except to educate members of the club through online meetings. In the future however, there will be more in-person activities.
“For many discussions I had with different kinds of people, they don't really think of ping pong as as an actual sport, [but] more as a party game,” James Jian said. “Not many people understand that if you learn it competitively, and you try to understand how professionals play, you soon find out that it's much harder than many sports out there when it comes to physical abilities and reflexes.”
James Jian said for right now, the club is recruiting junior officers, and for those who are interested, current officers will guide them before the official officer selection in order to train those who are enthusiastic and prepare them for the officer role.
“Ping pong is not an extremely popular sport in America and around where we are now,” Alan Jian said. “However, if you were to foster a larger human community, such as some sort of inter-district league with all of the other schools … that would, increase the interest [and would] definitely gain the attention of more people and players.”](https://hhsepitaph.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Screen-Shot-2021-02-22-at-6.35.22-PM-900x496.png)
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