Haskayne student to attend World Series of Beer Pong in Las Vegas

By Saima Asad, January 31 2017 —

Fourth-year marketing student Andrew Borys started throwing ping-pong balls into plastic cups six years ago. As he put it, it was “too cold to make basketball trickshots all the time.”

Now, the Haskayne School of Business student is set to compete in the World Series of Beer Pong this June.

Borys received the invitation to the event after his online videos of beer pong trick shots were featured on sports news website BleacherReport.com.

In his videos, Borys nails shot after shot in his basement, even using a golf club to get the ball in the cup.

“Bleacher Report did a feature on me a couple weeks ago and they mentioned that I was interested in competing at the World Series of Beer Pong,” he said. “Since that happened, the World Series community saw that video and immediately got interested in having me.”

While his videos mainly show him performing trick shots, Borys claimed he has never actually played a proper game of beer pong. He said he has no idea what to expect from the tournament.

Borys will compete for a $50,000 grand prize // Photo by Justin Quaintance

“This is definitely gonna be way out of my comfort zone. I’ll be competing with people around the world,” Borys said.

The World Series of Beer Pong takes place every year in Las Vegas, Nevada. The tournament began in 2006 with 80 registered teams.

The tournament has since expanded. Several hundred teams from multiple countries will compete this year for a $50,000 grand prize.

According to Borys, tournament organizers have used his invitation to draw attention to the relatively unknown World Series of Beer Pong.

“They’re trying to bring my online presence to the event to make it more of a mainstream event,” Borys said. “A lot of people never knew that the World Series of Beer Pong was a thing until Bleacher Report mentioned it and it’s definitely being heard all around the world because of that.”

Even though Borys’ YouTube channel is known mostly for his beer pong videos, he said there is much more to his videos than that.

“I started making these videos because I was too shy to speak in front of a camera. So throwing balls into cups — beer pong — was a way to do that. It’s not even that I really enjoy beer pong. It’s just kind of what my channel has grown into,” he said.

Borys practises for a few hours each day and said that making videos has become akin to a job.

“It’s exciting and nerve-wracking but it’s what I signed up for,” he said. “I create these videos because I want to provide entertainment value and provide videos that are more for entertainment and not for beer pong. Ideally, I’d like to start making similar kinds of videos in the future.”

But making videos isn’t Borys’ only hobby — he is also a marathon runner.

“I love running. I’ve run four marathons,” he said. “I had a tumour in my neck and about four years ago, I wasn’t able to run at all. I kind of made it my goal to run one marathon before I finish university and I’ve run four now. Not a lot of people know that.”

The World Series of Beer Pong will take place from June 1–5 at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.