![]() Indeed, even today, alumni of Lehigh’s Patriot League rival are indoctrinated as keepers of the paddle-less flame. "Stubby," as he was called in his fraternity, claims he first discovered the game in unpolished form on a visit to Bucknell four years prior. Rathod also spoke to Brian Poulton (Lehigh ‘85), an early evangelist of the paddle-free game. “We all our ping-pong paddles and wanted to use the free-throw part of beer pong.” By ‘88, Hill said, they'd “made famous.” In his 2004 essay for the now-defunct Dartmouth Independent, Anoop Rathod quotes Geoff Hill (Lehigh ‘87) on the throw game’s watershed moment. “Throw pong” - a variant that required no paddles - was on the rise. “They must have played the game in basement for many years because it smelled like hell down there,” he speculated to me via email.īut by the '80s, the winds of change carried whispers of a usurper to beer pong’s Pennsylvanian sovereignty. Marc*, Bucknell ‘82, remembers playing beer pong as late as 1978. Halfway across the Keystone State, Bucknell was paddling, too. Knight thinks of its dispersion “sort of like a game of telephone.” The paddle game made the rounds in New England, and as far south as Pennsylvania, where Lehigh University was playing paddle pong as late as February 1979, when the term first appeared in the school paper, The Brown and White. Like plagiarized term papers, it wasn’t long before beer pong spread to other schools. ![]() There, it’s called: “Beirut” (Lehigh) “beer pong” (Bucknell) The game: Teams throw a ball at beer cups across the table “We would like to try for the record in early June of this year,” he politely concluded his note, “so a quick response would be appreciated.” Word was spreading of Dartmouth’s beloved drinking game. In 1972, a Dartmouth student named Ted Lippman wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times, inquiring about who held beer pong’s world record, so that he and his classmates could break it. Some players notch thumb grooves to ensure grip while aiming at the 12oz, clear plastic cups on the other side of the table. “Then we snapped the handles off,” usually by bracing a paddle against a table and smashing the heel of one’s hand down on it. “Stinson’s Village Store in Hanover is where we bought ,” explained Knight. Regardless of the game, handle-less Champion Sports paddles quickly became the weapon of choice. Despite their different configurations and bylaws, Dartmouth pong variants are all built on the same foundational practice: palm a handle-less paddle, loft a ball skyward across the table, and try to sink the cup on the other side. Then there’s Ship (a Battleship-esque game that demands voluminous beer intake), Harbor, Slam, Line… you get the idea. Shrub and Tree, both named for the arboreal shape of their cup arrangements, are the most popular games on campus. Dartmouth frats wasted no time developing their own variations of the paddle game. “Kids at Dartmouth feel like they have ownership of a very special, like we’re guardians of the ‘original’ version.”īut the “original version” of beer pong is actually versions, plural. Excluding a downturn in the ‘60s ( actual drugs being the drug of choice) and a pivot in the ‘90s after the school banned unregistered kegs, the game has thrived at Big Green ever since. At some point, he said, “someone made the discovery that you could aim for the cups and incorporate them into the games.” Knight, class of 2003, was speaking with Thrillist on the phone from Brooklyn, where he now lives. “The way I’ve heard it, Dartmouth frat brothers in the ‘50s and ‘60s were playing ping pong in the basement with cups of beer resting on the table,” recounted Crispus Knight, author of Three For Ship: A Swan Song to Dartmouth Beer Pong. There, it's called: “Beer pong” or “pong” The game: Teams aim a ball at beer cups with a handle-less ping-pong paddle ![]() After interviewing alumni from the four corners of the US, combing the archives of the country’s oldest student newspaper, and consulting several pong prophets who claim to see the game’s future, we can now tell you, definitively, about its uncanny past. When did they start playing beer pong with paddles up at Dartmouth? Why doesn’t the rest of the country? How did this esoteric diversion spawn such a universally beloved pastime? What does it all mean, dammit?įret not, dear readers. ![]() From there, observe America’s favorite drinking game in its primordial form. Down in the fetid basements that power Dartmouth College’s best minds into oblivion, they simply won’t tolerate that kind of beer pong*. Go ahead: piss on the wall, or collapse into that ramshackle plywood bar in the corner. They'll kick your ass for lots of things in Hanover, New Hampshire, but never more swiftly than if you throw a ping-pong ball at a cup of beer.
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