What's all the racket?

Story and photos by Eli Martinez

What's all the racket at Vanguard these days? It would appear to be table tennis.

Six years ago, our own resident PE and health teacher who's been at Vanguard for seven years, Mr. Tedd Markos built two homemade ping pong tables out of plywood and pretty soon students began to play during lunch and whenever they had free time. And before you know it, the ping pong club and the Golden Paddle Tournament was born, and it is still in full swing. Today, the Golden Paddle Tournament is in its sixth year with a record-breaking 29 contestants and a new champion will emerge this month.

"IT'S FANTASTIC,” said, A.J. Bays, a strong and fierce competitor, and quite possibly the first female champion regarding the craze.

Over the years at Vanguard ping pong became more and more popular and the number of students who played greatly increased. It then was obvious that we needed more tables. After six years of using the same tables much change was much needed.

Mr. Markos, being the avid ping pong fan he is, joined a ping pong league this year and pretty soon his league became sponsored by the company Killerspin, one of the largest ping pong equipment, clothing, and accessories distributors in the world, whose products can be found in 14 different continents. So you can guess what happened next. Killerspin now sponsors Vanguard's table tennis club.

"I'm extremely psyched, it sounds like Markos is very passionate about the sport of ping pong and its involvement at Vanguard. I am very thankful that Markos puts in a lot of time and effort into Vanguard's very local ping pong club," said Thad Struggles, reigning golden paddle champion.

Mr. Markos wrote a killer letter to Killerspin informing them of our growing ping pong culture. He then came in touch with the programs and product development director; Rajeev Sharma and through a stroke of luck he agreed to sponsor our club, give us free equipment, and he also plans to send in professional players to visit the school.

"It's going be sweet, we're going to have fun and I'm going to beat Thad," said Kenzo Yoshimura, a fearless competitor who's in it to win it.

We received new tables courtesy of the company and they will be put to good use in our golden paddle tournament, which began January 25.

"It's super cool, props to Mr. Markos. This the most dedicated, competitive, and fun year of ping pong I've been involved in, " said Mr. Impastato, music/ping pong club emperor.

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At the time of publication, AJ Bays, Angie Mazanova, Pete Miller, Chris Kopec, Yoshimura are contenders to win, according to Mr. Markos. Thad Struggles plans to return for an exhibition game against the winner since he graduated last month. The teacher bracket favorite at this time is Mr. Kain.