Blow Pong

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 29, 1947, issue of PAW. 

The pre-game atmosphere was tense at Quadrangle Club. Quad women nervously wandered, drinking glasses of milk (“It coats your stomach,” one explained) and asking each other if she’d been sure to eat lots of bread and starchy things at dinner. On one side of the room, Quad men, attired in identical T-shirts, practiced strange-sounding cheers. “Give me a B…Give me an L…Give me an O…Give me a W…”

The big game was to start at nine. Shortly before the hour the Quad contingent formed itself into a ragged parade with cheerleaders up front, then the women now also sporting T-shirts with nicknames on the back, then amused supporters and incredulous passers-by. The group entered Tower Club to the cadence of more unusual cheers…”Blow to the left, blow to the right…” and climbed down the stairs to Tower’s basement game room. The players arranged themselves around a Ping-Pong table without a net and were introduced by a man dressed as a tiger standing on the table. 

Then the Tower girls came in and were introduced. Quad girls nervously whispered among themselves. The opponents looked tough, and Quad had a title to defend. The Tower team took its place opposite Quad and after a traditional singing of both the “National Anthem” and “Old Nassau,” after invocations to the Aeolian god of Gusts and to the Chinese god Luck, Ping, and Pong, and after another man had stood on the table, dressed only in a loin-cloth, with a glass of beer in the crook of one arm that he tilted up and drank empty — the game began. “Blow!” partisans screamed, and the girls puffed out their cheeks and blew. 

The game they were playing is a recent addition to the roster of Princeton sports, but that hasn’t stopped it from endangering spirit unrivaled since the days of locomotive cheers and the forward fumble. It’s called blow-pong and its idea, although crude, is simple. Twenty-two players, eleven on a team, each have a long and a short side of the Ping-Pong table to defend. The judge places a Ping-Pong ball in the center of the table. The players, kneeling, with their heads on a level with the table, try to blow it off their opponent’s edge. The opponents, naturally enough, try to blow it back. The members of whichever team has the ball go off on its side have to drink a glass of beer. The men’s games go to twenty-one points, the women’s only to fifteen. That’s the equivalent of about a six-pack of beer for the women, twice as much for the men who use bigger glasses. Blow-pong is a rough game for the players. The fans love it. 

This particular match was a challenge to the Quad women’s status as blow-pong champs, a title won last year. The crowd was about equally divided between Tower and Quad supporters, and extremely vociferous. It seems it’s a point of honor among some fans that they have to drink a glass of beer when their team does, but that, strictly speaking, is not part of the game. 

What is part of the game is red faces and piteous expressions after the first ten points or so, frequent and heated arguments with the referee, a self-styled member of the “Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad” (at least that’s what his shirt said) who stands nearby at all times with emergency “boot bags,” and, most important of all, lots of action on the Ping-Pong table. The fascination of the game cannot be expressed to the uninitiated. The Ping-Pong ball sometimes glides across the table to one side or the other and then shoots back after a concerted gust from several teammates. Its course will occasionally undergo an instant ninety degree change, and team members will go cross-eyed trying to blow it away. Some points take three or four seconds, some will go for several minutes. 

Attending a blow-pong game is a strenuous experience. The room grows immediately and immensely hot, and as the game progresses, it’s difficult for one to keep his impartiality if that’s what he’s planning. Several times fans for one team or another turned to me to shout, “That’s not fair! You saw it, didn’t you?” I found myself agreeing or disagreeing with the same vehemence. After a while, a spectator loses all sense of the absurdity of the game and starts to enjoy it all as he would any other game. After all, why not?

I took twenty-eight pad-sized pages of notes on the game last weekend. It was a good one. All the big names were there. An assistant dean of student affairs blew out the first Ping-Pong ball. Various campus politicos made appearances. A leader of the campus Christian sect showed up, pursed his lips disapprovingly, and left. I keep finding references in my notes to the shakiness of the table I was standing on and to the fear that as more and more people climbed on, it would eventually collapse and no one would notice. The atmosphere was that intense. 

Cries of “kill the ref” surfaced early in the game, but order was never seriously challenged. Spilled beer and cigarette butts quickly coated the floor. Tower’s eventual victory was apparent early on, but the spirit of the Quad girls never flagged. When the “Princeton First Aid” man tried to distribute “boot bags” to the Quad team, the women ripped them up and threw them back at him. 

The game ended with a Tower win, 15-11. The referee tried to clear a way for the teams to exit first, “ ’cause they might have to get out fast,” but the women seemed in pretty good shape and every one walked under her own power. The cheerleaders followed the teams out and then the fans. 

Everyone agreed that it had been a good match and that the Cap and Gown–Tower match scheduled soon would be another good one. I was one of the last to leave. As I walked out I passed a forgotten copy of Madame Bovary lying under a table, littered with ashes, soaking up beer.