At Seattle Table Tennis Championships, a resounding passion for pingpong

She may be only 11, with a black ponytail and gym pants, but when it comes to pingpong, Reda Ali can make the ball sizzle.

And Gene Treener may be 88, but he's far from ready for a quiet life where he'd be no closer to sports than his TV remote-control.

Reda, of Bellevue, and Treener, of Seattle, will play each other in an exhibition match Sunday during the third annual Seattle Table Tennis Championships at 3:30 p.m. at the Green Lake Community Center.

That they can play the game with finesse illustrates that the sport can be done with great proficiency by people of all ages and either gender, say those who embrace table tennis.

About 110 table-tennis players from all over Washington and Canada signed up for the two-day tournament, including three top players from China who are expected to compete in Sunday's final matches.

On Saturday, the tables were full and the room filled with the whir of paddles as they sent orange balls screaming over the nets.

"It's the fastest racket sport in the world, very grueling and intense," said Iftikhan Ali, of Bellevue, Reda's father, who introduced her to the sport several years ago.

While table tennis has traditionally been regarded as an informal "garage sport" in the U.S., elsewhere in the world, it's a highly regarded sport, Ali said. It's only in the past few decades that it's being taken seriously here.

Ali, who works in information technology, knew he wanted his daughter to become a serious player when he heard there was an excellent table-tennis coach in Seattle.

The sport, he says, teaches her "how to win and lose and accept loss and when to fight back."

As for Reda, "my friends like pingpong but not as a sport," she said.

Table tennis was created in 1880s England by Victorian gentlemen who wanted an indoor game to play after dinner. Using things such as the tops of Champagne corks as balls and the lids of cigar boxes for paddles, they lobbed the cork over barriers of books or knotted string nets in an imitation of outdoor tennis.

The game eventually caught on and became known as Ping-Pong when in 1901 an Englishman patented the name — drawn from the sound the balls made when struck. Eventually, it was known as the generic pingpong.

David Daw, 32, of Seattle, a tournament volunteer, grew up playing pingpong in the garage.

"I thought I was good," he said.

But he was consistently beaten by people much younger than he, students at South Seattle Community College, where he teaches English as a Second Language.

So he signed up with a club and began taking the game seriously, learning the various styles and techniques.

And it hasn't been easy retraining the king of garage pingpong, he admits.

"You have to be prepared to lose."

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com