FRIDLEY, Minn. (WCCO) — The most popular new club at Totino-Grace High School started by accident.  Students at first weren’t trying to start a ping pong club, but they did anyway.

“It was a ‘stats’ project that kind of went awry in a way. In a good way,” says club faculty advisor Michael Munson.  “Our kids were doing a statistics project to see what might be interesting to students or just tracking where our students go in our school,”

Students in the class hung signup sheets for fictitious clubs around school to track how many signatures they could gather. They weren’t trying to start a real club, but merely study the numbers. That didn’t matter though. Enough students wanted the real thing.

“We got a ton of feedback,” said Totino-Grace senior Jordan Lunders.  “More than we expected.”

As many as 40 students signed the “fake” signup sheet in two days. That number is more than the amount of kids in Chess Club, Math Club and Bowling Club at the school.  It was clear that Ping Pong Club would be a smash hit.

“Everyone just started coming out,” says Totino-Grace sophomore Jason Schirck. Club member are boys and girls of all grades at Totino-Grace.

“Not everyone can play hockey,” says Munson.  “Not everyone is tall and fast and so this is just a great way for all of our kids to get together and really enjoy an activity.”

The Ping Pong Club meets each Thursday after school.  At this point, the members play each other but hope more schools start a club of their own so different schools’ ping pong clubs can compete.