A Senior Moment

Last week I had the good fortune to participate in the 2009 Senior Games in California. Modeled after the traditional Olympics, the event drew more than 10,000 "athletes" from all across America. Competitors aged 50 and above competed in 27 different sports ranging from Archery to Track and Field. Within each of the sports, divisions are held in five year age increments. Most of the events were held on the campus at Stanford University with Humana, one of the county's largest health insurers, as the main sponsor. Other events were held throughout the San Francisco Bay area. The Stanford campus is spectacular and its athletic facilities are world class. It's easy to see why they have annually have the number one rated NCAA Division I athletic program once you have seen the facilities.

My particular sport is basketball, and I was the boys basketball coach at Shelton High School for 10 years before coming to United Way. There were about 30 teams in our division from all across the country who qualified a year earlier by finishing first or second in their state competition. In my case, we were the representatives from Connecticut though we actually won the state tournaments in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Jersey as well as Connecticut last year and could have represented any one of them.

As the graying of America becomes a major issue facing our country, events such as the Senior Games showcase another side of the aging issue. With most of the country currently fixated on the debate over health care, most of the attention is centered on the health costs of getting older. One way to help control those costs is to foster healthy life styles, and that is the great story of the Senior Games. The 10,000 competitors ranged in age from 50 to a 100 year old who was registered for tennis and bowling! What they all had in common was a desire to be fit and to compete. And from what I saw, they are succeeding. And the message that they are sending is that we need to encourage more people to maintain an active, healthy life style for as long as possible. Not everyone is going to win a gold medal at the Senior Games, but you never know if you don't try.

Getting back to the basketball, we did not win our age group. We won six games and lost three with all three of the losses coming down to the very last possession of the game. One of our wins was also at the buzzer in overtime. We played teams from New York, Nevada, Texas, Delaware, Illinois and Hawaii. Though I am disappointed that we didn't win the, we were more than competitive. I never expected to still be playing basketball at my age, but after seeing teams competing in an 80+ category maybe I've still got some years left after all!