Pong Participants Soberly Seek Glory

A night of House pride, trash-talking, and a whole keg of root beer ended with a miraculous three-cup comeback by the mysterious duo who only identified themselves as “Ty” and “Pat” (4-0 Ivy) to take the Pforzheimer House root beer crown.

Last Saturday, competition was fierce in Pfoho as their HoCo held trials for the upcoming Harvard inter-House root beer pong tournament.

“In Pforzheimer House we’re all about competition,” said Papa R. Chakravarthy ’12 (3-1 Ivy), one of the tournament’s organizers as well as a competitor. “The P in front of Pfoho doesn’t need to be there, but it’s there because of two things: pong and pride.”

Eleven teams responded to the call and stepped up to the table. The field was full of basketball players, root beer connoisseurs, root beer pong enthusiasts, and other stereotypical college characters. “I play for the love of the game,” said Paul T. Hedrick ’10, a former Crimson editor. “Basically everything I do, I do to win. If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

The tournament was anything but predictable. After the preliminary rounds had finished, No. 1 seeds Ryan K. Schell ’11, Pfoho HoCo co-chair, and Adam T. Clark ’11 (1-1 Ivy) seemed to stand out among the rest, having destroyed their first-round opponents.

“We’re sitting pretty right now,” Schell said at the time. “We’re finally getting into our stride. We train twice a day. We drink at least half a keg of root beer on weekends.”

Yet even they ultimately had no answer to the duo of Ty and Pat, who rode their underdog momentum all the way to the championships while keeping everything but their first names a secret. In the last seconds of the epic 10-cup finals, Ty and Pat, down three cups to one, made three straight shots to clinch their first title in a massive upset. They declined to comment.