It came to everyone’s surprise and delight when they saw that ping pong has returned to the Liberty Commons on Jan. 26. Mr. Nelson gave the all-clear to Mr. Wheeler to bring one table down on Tuesday and on Friday of last week, and two were brought down for the students to use. And of course, necessary health precautions are being taken, before you ever touch the paddles you must sanitize your hands to play.

On a separate table next to the ping pong table there is a spray bottle and rag that Mr. Wheeler uses to clean the ping pong table. Next to that is the hand sanitizer, along with a bucket of ping pong balls.

When asked why he decided to bring ping pong back, Mr. Nelson replied, “I’m hoping that we can get back to where we can occasionally smile.”

Wheeler said if one table goes well that the school would slowly begin to back more to the cafeteria.

Avid ping pong player sophomore Eli Bartek was happy that one of his favorite lunch activities had returned.

“The ping pong tables were one of the things that people enjoyed a lot, so now that that’s back people are going to be feeling better during the school day,” Bartek said.

Ever since COVID-19 struck the world with a devastating blow last year, nothing has ever been the same. But we are finally figuring out ways to battle this, and hopefully restore things to how they normally were before, starting with ping pong.