Natural selection is one of the most important topics in biology and it helps to clarify the variety and complexity of organisms. However, students in almost every stage of education find it difficult to understand the mechanism of natural selection and they can develop misconceptions about it. This article provides an active model of natural selection by means of a table tennis analogy. The analogy used is that only undamaged balls, representing genotypes compatible with the environment in every generation, can be hit over the net and make a contribution to the gene and genotype frequencies of the next generation. In contrast, squashed balls fail to go over the net and cannot contribute to the gene pool of the next generation. (Contains 2 figures.)