If you want a soft serve, go to Dairy Queen. Table tennis club is taught by Mr. Pogreba and he never backs down from a challenge. Pogreba teaches AP Language from 7:25 to 12:00 in the morning. Although, at lunch, his large fold-out table tennis table at the front of the room is brought to the middle of the room and is set up for competition. However, about ten years ago when the lunchtime club was founded, the table was not in very good shape. If an unlucky serve hit the table the wrong way, the celluloid ball would deflect in random ways. If someone called “table” it meant, in theory, that the player lost the point because the table messed up their process. This caused plenty of debate and changed the way the game was played. Table tennis is a game of skill, speed, an

d lateral quickness. Without an appropriate table, the game shifts to the idea of chance, not skill.

After hundreds of controversial finishes within the club’s history, the players and parents of the club came together to buy a brand-new playing surface. Nowadays, Mr. Pogreba describes the class as “fun” and “competitive”. He enjoys the club the most when he “beats everybody”, and jokingly says that his bad experiences happen “The occasional moments that I lose”. Aiden Morris, a junior, also seems to enjoy lunch in Pogreba’s room. “I don’t really play much at all,” He says, “but I do sometimes and it can get really intense especially when it comes down to the last point or when it is about time to fold the table back up when lunch is about to end”.

This year sparks plenty of new opportunity for new ping pong legends to arise, as many of the veterans have departed for their futures outside of high school. “We had a whole lot of seniors last year,” Pogreba says, “there are only about nine people in here on Friday, and that is easily the day that [students] come in the most”. “There is no table tennis club on Thursdays, but even then, Monday through Wednesday nobody comes in” He adds. Morris agrees by saying there should be way more people for such an entertaining club. “I’m usually the only one in there so I play against myself” Morris claims. “It’s super fun and people should come in and try to beat me but if you don’t want to that’s okay too”.

For now, the novice Helena high table tennis players continue to play for the hope of becoming one of the greats to ever swing a paddle in the AP Language classroom and to beat their own teacher just for the fun of it.