SU students score unsuspecting friendships when painting beer pong tables
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On Ackerman Avenue live three groups of friends from Syracuse University. Logan Armistead, Lucien Kraycik, Tyler Dudish and Will Parsons live in a gray house. Connor Lynch and Eddie Howell, live in a white house, and Makenzie Sproles and Audrey Haselby live next door to Lynch.
The three groups of friends — and the rest of their roommates — didn’t know each other when the fall semester began. But when Armistead and his friends were moving in, they looked across the street to find Howell’s painted vineyard vines-themed beer pong table. Armistead wasn’t only inspired by Howell, but saw him as a friendly foe.
To forge their own masterpiece, Armistead and his friends made a deal: Sproles and her roommates would paint their table, and Armistead’s house would build a beer pong table from scratch for Sproles and her friends.
Lo and behold, the tables drew the friend groups together.
“We were in competition,” Armistead said. “I’m like, ‘We’re gonna make it bigger with the die table than you.’”
In front yards and apartment units across SU, many students living off campus spend their last few weeks of warm sunshine playing beer pong or die outside of their homes. In the center of it all, there’s a beer pong table that holds each and every one of those memories.
While some students take the easy route and opt for a plain, store-bought table, others go for a personal spin; constructing their own table and painting complex designs without professional help.
To construct his magnum opus, Howell bought nails, a nail gun and four-by-four and two-by-four pieces of Home Depot wood. Home projects are nothing new for Howell.
“I have done plenty of projects with my dad, so I know my way around using any kind of tool, and so it was easy for me, but fun because it took a couple of hours,” Howell said. “I could hang out, listen to music and enjoy it.”
Eddie Howell painted a vineyard vines-themed beer pong table. Though Howell is currently studying abroad, his Ackerman Avenue roommates are enjoying the table. Avery Magee | Development Editor
When it was time to design Howell’s table, he looked to his Boston roots. When one thinks of Massachusetts, the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park or the Boston Celtics’ NBA-leading 18 titles often comes to mind. But when Howell and his friend were designing the table over the summer, they opted for something that blended with the University Hill neighborhood.
“Both me and my friend are from Mass. We wanted to implement that into our table, have a way to show it,” Howell said. “We didn’t want to go with the basic Red Sox, Celtics, anything in between.”
For the design, they landed on the Massachusetts-born vineyard vines.
Before the school year started, Howell, who’s currently studying abroad, dropped his table off at his future Ackerman Avenue home. According to his friend’s feedback, the table has been a hit. When Lynch and his friends lined the blue, white and light-red table with Red Solo Cups, the nearby residents left their houses.
“When we were meeting our neighbors, everyone came over and played a couple times,” Lynch said. “I can’t say 100% certain, but we might have inspired (Armistead and his friends) to build the tables.”
“But don’t quote me on that.”
Two days since Armistead and Sproles’ houses made their deal, Armistead constructed two tables from scratch by watching YouTube videos — the group admitted their engineering majors had little impact on the construction. With a sketched-out document Armistead drew up and a blue-painted table, each roommate was in charge of designing certain parts of the table before Sproles’ friends began painting.
Parsons stuck with the alcohol theme: Coors Light, Fireball and Michelob Ultra logos and the classic pairings he calls “THE THREE AMIGOS” — salt, lime and a shot of tequila. Kraycik was in charge of the table’s middle, where he chose his local MLB team’s logo, the Philadelphia Phillies. As an avid skier, Kraycik also painted his favorite ski brand, K2.
Like Howell, Armistead looked to his personal life. He grew up listening to rock music — his favorite band is the Grateful Dead — and recently, Armistead has become a hobbyist fisher. Thus, the band’s colorful bears and a fish painting with the words “Never to late to go Fishing” marked on the table.
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Dudish was entrusted to design the ends of the table — arguably the most utilized part. To mark where the beer pong and die cups go, Dudish traced beer cans, golf balls and pool balls, creating a “cool design” while maintaining his personality.
“The logos of my favorite sports teams are pretty hard to paint, so I thought that having colors would be a cool way to circumvent that,” Dudish said. “These are blue, gold and white for the (Buffalo) Sabres, and then over there is blue, red and white for the (Buffalo) Bills.”
With the design finalized, Sproles and her friends kept their agreement and painted the guys’ table. Within two weeks, the friends had finished painting — and the positive feedback was rewarding.
Once Armistead’s table was complete, he felt the deal was fair and square. Standing next to Howell’s “vineyard vines” table and Armistead’s blue, patchy table, Sproles’ table would’ve completed the trifecta — except, it’s not yet finished.
“They’re like, ‘If they build it, we’ll paint it,’” Sproles said. “It’s a little unfair trade to be honest. We might’ve deserved more.”
After spending two weeks on their neighbor’s table, what started as an ambitious plan to paint their table turned into another story, as most of their motivation was spent painting Armistead and his house’s table.
However, their vision isn’t gone.
Sectioned off into triangles, Sproles and her friend’s table uses light, pastel colors. The roommates agreed each would get 2.5 squares filled with their favorite interests and drinks, like a dirty martini, and their hometowns — both Sproles and Haselby are from Colorado. The pair also thought of adding a Coors Light logo.
Roommates Bridget Craig, Annabelle Rose, Grace Crabbe and Maddy Strong are facing the same predicament as Sproles and Haselby. Craig and her roommates didn’t have to worry about the rain derailing their plans to paint their tables outside, as the trio live in an off-campus apartment. For them, it was simply a matter of getting it done.
Annabelle Rose traces Snoopy wearing a Syracuse University sweater onto a piece of parchment paper for her and her roommates’ beer pong table. Rose tentatively plans to pass the table down to younger members of her sorority. Avery Magee | Development Editor
“To be fair, we didn’t get a lot done for one night,” Rose said. “We really just need to take a night and lock in and we can probably finish it.”
Their designs are easy enough — they opted to use a plastic table for its smoother surface. However, their Five Below paint made the process harder, forcing the group to paint multiple coats and prolonging the painting process. For Craig, a pro tip would be using paint from Michaels, she said.
On the roommates’ table, the trio decided to put their favorite interests combined with a sense of humor. In one section, a “Toy Story” green alien, which is famously known for saying the phrase “the claw” will instead be saying “the White Claw.” A different section will include Snoopy wearing an SU sweater, while another part will feature the Margaritaville parrot saying “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.”
While the Ackerman Avenue neighbors used a homemade wooden table, a plastic table makes things more accessible, especially when it comes to figuring out how they’d pass it down.
Rose hopes to hand her table down to younger members of her sorority. Otherwise, Craig plans on leaving it in her home in New Jersey rather than her roommates’ hometowns because she lives the most central to them all.
“We could either pass it on or it can stay in New Jersey because, no hate, no shade, we’re gonna go to the bars on the Jersey shore,” Craig said.
For Craig and Sproles’ roommate groups, once the table is finished (hopefully, before Halloween, they said), it’ll be an accurate representation of their school community. Each table section portrays each roommate’s interests, passions and personalities.
While a beer pong table was what brought Sproles and Armistead’s friend group together, for Armistead, a beer pong table doesn’t accurately depict his roommates’ bond.
“We’ve known each other for over two years now,” Armistead said. “I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that you can’t really put on a table that represents us.”
