KINGSTON — Line technician Gary Bergeron and fellow line worker Alan Bowering are used to fixing electrical problems, not dropping pingpong balls from the bucket of their Unitil truck.

“I never heard this one before,” Bergeron said as Bowering grabbed a mesh basket fill with about 700 pingpong balls and climbed into the bucket in the middle of a field at YMCA Camp Lincoln Tuesday night.

Unitil volunteered the two workers and a truck to participate in the youth camp’s first Pingpong Ball Drop to raise money for a summer camp scholarship benefiting children in need of financial help.

Each ball had a number and the one that landed closet to a hole in the ground was the winner. That number was 417 and it was purchased by Bob Mitchell, who won $1,000 but donated the big prize back to the camp.

Rhonda Bernstein, the camp’s development director, said the camp hoped to sell 1,000 numbered balls, but came up a little short at just over 700. Still, she said she was pleased with the success of the event and hopes it will become an annual fundraiser.

“It does go to such a great cause,” she said.

The balls were dropped about 30 feet over the field before a crowd of parents and children, many of them kids attending the summer camp.

Susan Denault of Merrimac, Mass., and her children, Isabelle, 9, Seth, 11, and Tristan, 6, thought they had a good shot at winning because they purchased ball numbers 112 to 125.

“The odds are much better than Powerball,” Denault said, laughing.

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