How To Build The Ultimate Dorm-Friendly Beer Pong Table

You can indeed fit a passable beer pong table in a dorm room, you just might need to temper your expectations a bit. Image courtesy of Flickr user Manufacturer CC 2.0.

Dorm rooms have always been a great place to learn games like King's Cup and Caps, but what if I told you that you could squeeze beer pong--the Holy Grail, Superbowl, and Mt. Everest of all drinking games--into your all-too-tiny room?

Beer pong?  In a dorm room?  "Preposterous," you say.  How in the hell you can cram such a space-consuming game into your horse stall of a room?  Before we go on, I should point out that this is probably not a very good idea, and you stand a good chance of getting busted by your RA.  But dammit, if you take your beer pong seriously and want to throw caution and ping pong balls to the wind, then by all means, read on.

Alright, the first thing you need to do is give up on the notion that you're going to fit a regulation-sized beer pong table in a dorm room.  You're not.  Even if you could cram a giant table or slab of wood in your room, you'd just be asking to get busted.  With that in mind, you'll need to design your table with both size and sound suppression in mind.

Dealing with Space Constraints

As I said, a full-sized beer pong table is just too long to fit in your dorm room.  When you really think about it though, beer pong tables waste a lot of space.  The cups are lined up on either end, but the middle 75% of the table is used for little more than sharpie signatures and the odd bounce shot.  Your dorm room table should be as short as possible, eliminating the wasted space.  If you did it right, the cups on either side of the table should be less than two feet apart.  

This stub of a table might not look very appealing, but you can compensate for the shorter length by establishing throwing lines a few feet behind it on either side.  With this arrangement, you'll be throwing balls the same distance as you would on the typical frat house table, with none of the wasted space.  Of course, this essentially kills the bounce shot, but who's really going to miss that?

Suppressing Noise

Nothing attracts the attention of a roaming RA faster than the pwack pwack pwack of bouncing ping pong balls. To avoid getting busted, you'll need to mask the stereotypical beer pong noises.  Instead of a traditional wood table (which of course takes up way too much space, anyway), you should make your table out of a skinny cardboard box set across a couple chairs.  A ping pong ball striking hollow cardboard makes a completely different noise than a ball bouncing off wood, and probably won't make a passerby's ears perk up.  Sure, the balls won't bounce, but this isn't an issue on such a short table anyway.

The beer pong purists might get up in arms about this one, but you'd be wise to avoid the traditional red Solo cups.  Tall styrofoam cups hardly make any noise compared to their bright plastic brethren, and hardly change the dynamics of the game at all.  This is absolutely worth the tradeoff.  

Location is also critical.  This should go without saying, but you want the table to be as far away from the front door as possible.  If you have a suite-style room with a bathroom in the middle, try to squeeze the table in there if you can.  The more you can make the sound waves dissipate before reaching the hallway, the better.  You could even stuff a towel along the bottom of the door as a last layer of noise (and beer smell) defense.  Also, consider playing some music out of a speaker near the door to mask the beer pong sounds, just be sure it isn't loud enough to draw a noise complaint.

It Can Be Done

Obviously this isn't the only way to play beer pong in a dorm room, but it offers space efficiency and discretion without sacrificing much in the way of fun.  Just please don't forget that all-in-all, this is probably a stupid idea to begin with... but it sure can be fun. If you're confused about any of the above tips, I included a silly diagram of this setup that I drew on my iPad.

 Feel free to print this for reference

Comments

[Drinking Games: Better Drunk Than Wasted]

Nothing like a well planed drinking game attack!