Talk to any Laguna Woods Table Tennis Club member, and the word “passion” is bound to come up. These folks love their sport. And for many reasons.

Igor Bloshtein, 60, has been playing table tennis for 10 years, switching to the sport after a lifetime of martial arts.

“I turned to table tennis as a new hobby. It’s my passion now,” Bloshtein said. “It’s good for stamina, endurance; it keeps you in good shape – and it’s the best form of exercise.”

That passion led Bloshtein to compete in the 2022 Meiklejohn National Seniors Table Tennis Tournament at Clubhouse 5 last week.

The tournament, held June 2-5, brought together 162 of the top players age 40 and older from around the U.S., plus 17 from the Village. They competed for $13,000 in prize money in 31 events broken down into age groups and skill levels.

This year was the 30th edition of the tournament, after a hiatus in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic.

Mabel Tam also competed in the tournament.

When Tam, 67, moved to the Village seven years ago, she searched, she said, for a sport to fill her retirement days. She found it in the Table Tennis Room on the third floor of the Community Center building.

“I walked into the room and saw two ladies in their 70s having such a good time laughing and giggling,” Tam recalled. “I said to myself, this is what I want to do, laugh and giggle.”

These days, Tam plays four days a week, two hours a day – and she’s still laughing and giggling when she plays, she said. Plus, she’s the president of the Table Tennis Club, and she helped make sure the tournament ran smoothly.

Resident Tony Kaloui, 69, likes table tennis for the exercise as well – he said he’s lost 22 pounds in the year he’s been playing, also about four times a week, two hours each time.

But it goes beyond that: “Table tennis is good for physical, mental and social (health),” Kaloui said. “Social is a major part of it.”

And there’s more: “People in the club are just so friendly,” he said. “Right away I found so many new friends and amazing people. They’re nice and open. I just love them.”

It was that same passion for table tennis that led the late Village resident Bill Meiklejohn to found the national seniors tournament in the Village in 1989, setting up a foundation to ensure the sport could continue here. (The retired Northrop Aircraft employee, who enjoyed table tennis as a college student, also donated millions to build the Meiklejohn Critical Care Pavilion at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center.)

As with other sports, many of the best table tennis players started young – “playing in the basement,” Tam said.

That accessibility and the low cost of table tennis make it popular among Asian communities, she said.

“Asians start when they’re very young children. They often learn it in the streets, just watch others play and learn from it,” Tam said. “It’s a very basic sport. All you need is a table – you can use a dining room table – a ball and some paddles.”

Club member Jingzhi Zhou, 60, said many young children “always go to school with a paddle in their backpack.”

The six-year Village resident has been playing table tennis “seriously” for four to five years, she said, and she also plays pickleball, badminton and tennis.

But the players agreed that table tennis can be played – even learned – by older people. They pointed to the Village Table Tennis Club as an example.

“There are players in their 90s beating younger players,” Bloshtein said. “Age doesn’t matter, it’s the skills.”

“Table tennis is a good sport for all ages,” Zhou said. “You can play very actively, or you can play very mildly.”

Case in point: Club member and tournament director Len Hauer, 82, started playing as a child in his basement in St. Paul, Minnesota.

And he’s still going strong: This year he made it all the way to the over-80 singles semifinals.

For information about the Table Tennis Club, call 973-886-9626.