Alan Beck puts the ping in the pong Alan Beck, who calls himself, "Jack of all trades, master of none," won the first ever Vernal City Table Tennis Tournament Tourna-ment Saturday. The tournament was co-sponsored by Vernal City Recreation and Bi-Co Rentals, Ren-tals, and was under the direction of City Recreation Director, Pam Beyers. Beck romped to victory, losing only two games through the entire tournament. Those two games came in the second match of the day, to Kris Wilson. Wilson had Beck against the wall at two games to one, in the best of five match. "I really real-ly owe the tournament win to Kris," said Beck. "I had to get tough and become more serious about my game early in the day. I really felt I was in trouble and I started to lose my legs." With his back to the wall, Beck played perhaps his best game of the tournament in the fourth game of the Wilson match. He jumped on top from the onset and never looked back. "I just decided if I was going to pull this off, I had to do it myself. He wasn't going to beat himself, I had to go out and beat him. I just felt like I had nothing to lose, so I went out to either win or lose it myself. I put more pace on the shots and got more aggressive. ag-gressive. I got a couple of quick points and gained confidence in my shots. "To be down like that is a fun situation," situa-tion," said Beck. "You see what your character is made of. I was glad tb see I could come back. I was really nervous when he had me down. At the first of the Wilson match I was just satisfied to get the ball back over the net, but he beat me bad in that third game. Something like 21 to 12 or 14 or something like that. I realized Kris was too good to just hit the ball back over the net, but after I came back, I was ready then, I had confidence." Although Beck did not lose another game the rest of the day he said, "They were all good ping pong players, I guess it was just my day." Dick Rosemier placed second in the tournament. He ended up losing only to Beck on the day. Rosemier went through the winners bracket undefeated until he met Beck in the final match of the winners win-ners bracket. He then moved to the losers bracket in the double elimination tournament and played Bill Price for the opportunity to play Beck for the cham- 1 ' ! . : ; ' t - . : ' " - ? ; f; ' . , ...... - -wm KRIS WILSON, the only person to win a game against champion, Alan Beck. I " ..." lire ry . ...... , v .riiivy.v- - , .3 I '' , ; -S i ' " - I" i Mike Schaefermeyer Darwin Ericksen pionship. Since Beck was undefeated, the winner of the RosemierPrice match would have to beat Beck twice to win the tournament. But it wasn't to be. Rosemier beat Price and then lost to Beck once more and the tournament was over. Price finished third. Wilson said, after the defeat to Beck, he just became tentative realizing victory vic-tory was withing his grasp. He said, "You can never get through a match with the same style you begin with. There is just no way you can finish a match without something happening somewhere along the line to change the flow." He also said, "It's the most fun I've had in a long time." Beck said he learned to play table tennis ten-nis when he was a boy of about eight or nine years old. "In elementary school thay had this arts and crafts class during dur-ing the summer, and they also had a ping pong table. I spent most of my time playing play-ing ping pong. I did that for about two summers, and they I didn't play again until I went to Colorado Mountain College. Col-lege. I played there two years." Beck said he has been involved in athletics and games "since I could throw a ball hard enough to break a window." He was been involved in baseball and softball, racquetball and was a ski instructor in-structor in Aspen, Colo, for five years. But even with all this, Beck said he really didn't get heavily into table tennis ten-nis until he started working for Bi-Co Rentals in January of 1982. "I really owe all my success in table tennis to Stanley Fullenwider. We play every day at lunch for about an hour. Stan is a good table tennis player, but much more than that, he's a great competitior. He pushes me to my limit if I'm going to beat him. It really gave me an advantage over a lot of the guys in the tournament, beause I was really tournament tough going in from playing Stan." Pam Beyers, Vernal City recreation director said, with the support this tournament tour-nament received, it's highly likely other tournaments of the sort will be held. Ms. Beyers said she appreciated the support of the city, and especially Bi-Co for contributing con-tributing money for prizes. Several of the participants expressed their appreciation for the chance to get involved in something like this. There is even talk among the participants of forming for-ming a table tennis club in Vernal. i i - ALAN BECK shows off his trophy and "magic paddle" whirt ried him to the championship. it:" I A--' "1 ' ALAN BECK (left) won the first ever Vernal table tew tournament. DICK ROSEMIER (center) placed second and B Price third. 6- - A ; . . . s r ; . : s v.. . l. ' . BILL PRICE, enroute to third place finish.