Growing older does not mean taking to the hammock and gently swaying away the years.
While that can be fine, there are some Tucsonans who have opted for a lifestyle that would exhaust many a younger person:
They swim, shot put, play badminton, volleyball, basketball and tennis. They even do power lifting.
Tucson seniors embrace sports that challenge them mentally and physically, and many of them have the proof of their talents in the form of medals they’ve won in local, state and national competitions, such as the Tucson Senior Olympics Festival. The 2016 fest continues through the end of January.
Mike Davis, the program coordinator for the Tucson event, sponsored by Tucson Parks and Recreation, is impressed with the skills and energy he sees in the athletes.
“It’s fun to see people are still competitive in almost everything they do,” he says.
“They join because they want to play and they want to win.”
Last year, about 1,500 signed up for the festival. About as many are expected to compete this year, Davis says.
The Tucson games are open to anyone who turns 50 this calendar year and older, but they are not a qualifier for the national games. The state Senior Olympics, in Phoenix on Feb. 13-March 13, will qualify competitors for nationals.
“A lot of people use this as a warmup for the state games,” says Davis.
Pickleball is by far the most popular sport here, he said. “It’s easier on the knees, but it’s still a fast-paced game.”
Davis, 42, is a few years away from participating in the Senior Olympics. But he’s not sure he could keep up. “I’ll compete if I think I can win,” he says. “But some of the seniors beat me now.”
Meet some of Tucson’s Senior Olympians:
Beverly Schulz
Age: 73.
Sport: Swimming, freestyle and backstroke.
How she came to compete: Schulz used to be a competitive runner — a sport she picked up when she was 50. “I did over 40 marathons and a few 50-milers,” she says.
But she had a bad back, and the pain became to be too much. She was a swimmer, too, and dove into that sport with more gusto.
She also took up Qigong, which has eliminated her back pain.
Now, she is a member of the Saddlebrooke Masters Swimmers relay team, and regularly competes — and wins.
And she participates in the Green Valley Senior Games.
“Going to the Senior Olympics was an eye opener,” says Schulz, who swims three to four days a week.
“It was fun, and it’s encouraging to see everyone participating, no matter what level skill.”
Schulz isn’t really in it to win it.
“They are so patient and so encouraging,” Schulz said of her fellow Senior Olympic competitors. “If you medal, that’s great, but the best part is the enjoyable experience. And at this age, we like to enjoy ourselves.”
Helen Bayly
Age: 78.
Sports: Master diver, swimmer, javelin, discus, shot put, standing broad jump.
How she came to compete: Bayly, the mother of five, credits her children for pushing her into sports.
She was complaining about the usual aches and pains that are visited upon the aging body, when a son called her bluff. “Mum, why don’t you quit grumbling and take up swimming,” he suggested.
Did she ever.
Bayly began swimming about a decade ago, and now competes in Masters meets and the Senior Olympics. She also took up diving, but there is no category for that in the competition.
Several years ago when a coach at the University of Arizona suggested some of the student- athletes work with the senior athletes, she learned her track and field events. Those are sports she does compete in.
And competes well.
“I’m very good at getting medals,” admits Bayly, who once jumped her height, 5 feet 1½ inches, in the standing broad jump. “I’ve had a whole bunch of them; they can be heavy, you know.”
She knows her limitations.
“I had a go at badminton, but it left me with such aching joints, so I said ‘never again.’ ”
But track and field, and her water sports, don’t wreak havoc on her body.
“I do things that don’t hurt me,” she explains in a lilting accent courtesy of her native Australia. “I think I’ve reached the stage of wisdom where I can say to myself, ‘Don’t do that Helen; you’ll regret it.’”
She figures she has spent a lifetime preparing for sports.
“Years of carrying babies, groceries and shoveling snow made me strong,” she says.
Bayly has no idea how many medals she has won in Senior Olympics and other competitions. She has a shoe box full of them, and there are just as many that she has given away.
“I really don’t like depriving others who try way harder than I do,” she says.
She has found some fine uses for them.
“I usually end up passing on my gold medals to the Boys and Girls Clubs, because they can have them reengraved for the kids. And I’ve given them to special friends who are battling cancer. Those are the real gold medal events.”
Harold Peter
Age: 81.
Sport: Swimming, breast stroke and backstroke.
How he came to compete: Peter credits the aches and pains of aging for pushing him into the swimming pool.
“If something pains you in your body, once you’re in the water, it’s almost gone,” he says.
And it’s boredom that pushed him into competitions.
“Swimming is a boring sport,” he says. “It’s lane after lane practicing four times a week. … It it weren’t for competitions, I don’t think I would swim — they are such a great goal.”
Peter, who owned two paint manufacturing plants before he retired, hadn’t swum since high school when he picked the sport up a decade ago.
“I’m kind of surprised that I did so well,” he says.
“Well” is an understatement. He has been the Arizona State Masters Swimming champ every year since 2006.
In 2014, he went to the Masters world championships in Montreal and “swam myself to the top 10 in the 100 and 200 meters.”
And last year, he competed against 17 others in his age group in the national Senior Olympics and came in fifth. He thinks he would have done better if he hadn’t had a mini-stroke while swimming his first event, the 50-yard backstroke. That kept him from competing in the 200-yard breast stroke the next day, but he only stepped out because of medical advice.
Perhaps not medaling was a gift: “I have hundreds of medals,” he says. “I’m running out of wall space.”
Peter, who came to the United States from Germany in 1956, will be swimming in the Tucson Senior Olympics Fest. He is likely to need more wall space.
He has accomplished a great deal in a sport he took up in earnest just a decade ago. And he is pleased about that.
“Yes, I am proud of myself,” he says. “So many of my high school friends, most of them, sit in a wheelchair. They are all astonished that I do what I can do.”
Marylee M. Pangman
Age: 63.
Sport: Badminton.
How she came to compete: “I did sports all my life, but I drifted away from them and I gained weight,” says Pangman, the former owner of The Contained Gardener and author of “Getting Potted in the Desert.”
“Finally I decided to do something, but I didn’t want to just exercise, so I went back to sports.”
About six years ago, she started taking badminton classes through Tucson Parks and Recreation. She had found her sport.
“After about three years, I qualified in the (Senior Olympics) nationals for doubles.” Her regular partner couldn’t go, so she teamed up with a woman from Hawaii. “We had never played together, but we ended up taking a bronze medal.”
This is not the genteel lawn games out of “The Great Gatsby.”
“It is absolutely strenuous,” said Pangman.
“The calories you burn in badminton exceed what is burned in tennis. The game is faster. … It’s almost an aerobic sport. That birdie can be traveling as fast as 90 miles an hour on a court.”
Pangman likes the competition, but it’s not the best part of Senior Olympics, she said.
“When you get together with other players — they are so nice and so helpful. Yes, it’s competitive, but everyone wants everyone to succeed.”
