McCaleb: These pingpong feats should be seen

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

Steve Olson and Paul Conzen of Lake in the Hills are an Internet sensation.

As in, they’ve reached more than 300,000 viewers, and counting.

The 2007 Jacobs High School graduates and Olivet Nazarene University students joined forces with a couple of their college classmates recently to turn a college drinking game affectionately known as beer pong on its ear.

The game, as designed, essentially involves throwing a pingpong ball into a plastic cup of beer.

Olson and friends eliminated the alcohol and added a video camera, a cool violin orchestra soundtrack, and some unbelievable trick shots and – voila – a three-and-a-half-minute video that’s become a hit on YouTube, break.com and sportsillustrated.com.

Among the successfully made trick shots are these wonders: sidearm over a bathroom-stall door; baseball-style using a frying pan instead of a bat; while riding a tricycle, and a skateboard; from the top of gymnasium bleachers into the cup on the floor below; and ricocheting off a half-dozen or so carefully placed props.

Don’t believe me? Check the video below.

Olson said it took about 15 hours’ worth of shooting to get the 221 seconds of videotape. The most difficult shot to make, he said, involved bouncing the pingpong ball off a basketball backboard twice before it lands into the cup below.

“That took maybe 40 or 50 shots before we got it,” he said.

The shots are so incredible that some online viewers questioned whether the video was legitimate.

“Considering that we filmed it on a flip hand-held camera and used Windows Movie Maker to put the clips together, we have gotten some hilarious accusations about it being doctored,” said Olson, who’s majoring in physical education.

The video features Olson, Matt Compton of Morton, David Anderson of Wisconsin, and Michael Schimp of Michigan.

Conzen plays more of a bit role because he was unavailable when most of the shots were filmed.

The video has become so popular online that Olson and company were congratulated by university officials because of the exposure that tiny Olivet, in suburban Bourbonnais, is receiving.

But why spend so much time on a YouTube video?

“It was just fun,” Olson said. “We started these little weekend competitions among ourselves. It just sort of developed into this.”

Overheard at my house the other day: Our 5-year-old daughter says to my wife: “There’s a mom’s day and a dad’s day. How come there’s no kids’ day? It’s not fair.”

Wife replies to 5-year-old daughter, “Every day is kids’ day around here.”

Truer words never have been spoken.

Happy Mother’s Day weekend to my wife, Allison; my Mom, Rae, back in Erie, Pa.; and to all you mothers out there.

• Dan McCaleb is editor of Northwest Herald. He can be reached at dmccaleb@nwherald.com.