Games, just for the fun of it

Published 11:38 am Thursday, June 5, 2008

Getting older may be inevitable. Getting lazier is not.

Though a well-padded rocking chair may be the destination of choice for some in the senior set, a good many of our gray-haired neighbors are heading to gymnasiums, swimming pools, tennis courts and other exercise venues for reasons of health and happiness. They work out to look better and feel better, and because it’s flat-out fun.

“So you’re 50? You’re just a young kid,” said 79-year-old Lou Wick of Mountlake Terrace, who has been an avid tennis buff for some 60 of those years. “So get out there and start doing some of the things you did when you were younger. Because your life is not over.”

“I’ve always stayed in shape,” said 60-year-old Ginny Scantlebury of Shoreline, another tennis player. “I’m almost like a freak about working out. It’s like a compulsion for me, but I feel far better if I work out than if I don’t.”

For Wick, Scantlebury and hundreds of other 50-and-over athletes from around Snohomish County and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, this summer’s Northwest Senior Games are a chance to showcase their sporting skills. And, more importantly, to enjoy themselves.

The Northwest Senior Games include the sports of ice hockey, badminton, softball, basketball, ballroom dancing, line dancing, pickleball, swimming, track and field, kayaking, table tennis, volleyball, beanbag baseball, tennis, running (half-marathon) and golf. The ice hockey tournament is already under way, and other competitions such as tennis and beanbag baseball will continue through the end of June. The golf tournament is in August.

Most of the events are this weekend at various sites in the greater-Seattle area. The track and field competition, for instance, will be Saturday at West Seattle Stadium. Ballroom and line dancing will be contested at Seattle’s Rainier Community Center, while the swimming competition is slated for Kirkland’s Peter Kirk Swimming Pool.

The only competitions to be held in Snohomish County are later this month. The tennis tournament will be June 20-22 at Harbor Square Athletic Club in Edmonds. A “New to Competition” table tennis tournament will be June 21 at the Everett Senior Activity Center.

Don Jones, a past president for the Northwest Senior Games and a current board member, said he is expecting around 600 total participants, which would be roughly 200 more than a year ago. Some are elite athletes who compete nationally and even internationally in age-group events, he said, but others are essentially novices.

“With the top echelon, we almost know who’s going to win the event before they start,” Jones said. “And there are other people who maybe don’t expect to win, but the important thing is that they just go out and participate.”

The games, he went on, “are competitive because we have some good people there. But we’re trying to keep them under control when they’re playing with people who want to have some fun. Because everybody is out there to have a good time. It’s just a fun thing, and it’s also a chance to meet some new people.”

Scantlebury, who is both the commissioner of the tennis competition and a competitor herself, is a onetime college tennis player, so she’s serious about her sport. But she also wants the games to get newcomers excited about fitness.

“There are people who haven’t played tennis in 40 years,” she said. “And then we get them out there with a racquet and they are so excited. So this is about encouraging people to get back into sport and to play more.”

Put another way, she said, it’s about “getting seniors off their butts.”

That remark resonates with 75-year-old Dick Harrison of Woodway, a track and field athlete who has competed six times at the National Senior Olympics. Harrison — he will enter the 100, long jump, triple jump, discuss, javelin, shot put and hammer events at this weekend’s competition — got hooked on track and field when he was 59 and has no plans to slow down.

“The longer you keep your body functioning, it’s good health-wise,” he explained. “But in conjunction with the physical aspect is the mental aspect of feeling that you can still compete and the camaraderie of meeting with other people your age. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best athlete or the worst. Everyone talks to everyone.”

Still, Harrison said, “there is a hesitancy” among many seniors. “We struggle all the time to get people over that just to get them out. Sure, it’s competing, and there are a lot of competitive juices flowing at the track meet. But we need to get people off the coach and get them moving their bodies again.”

Rich Myhre writes for The Herald in Everett.