 Here are some of you last week when I talked with enthusiasm about the senior games because this is a smaller crowd and these three athletic people can't wait to talk to you. Ginny Callan was going to introduce them and I'm filling in for her because she wasn't able to be here. So I have to read my little notes here. We're going to hear from George Maltz who's the only paid person for the senior games who lives in Rochester, Vermont, a very small town in south central Vermont. And then two participants, Margaret Gibson from East Montpelier who has won podium honors at the National Senior Games in Tracton Field and she'll tell you more about that. And Sarah Bombadier who's nice enough to come from Richmond, Vermont and has competed over the years, I don't know how many, in swimming, biking, power walking and triathlons. So just to give you a little bit more information, from what I know Margaret's father and mother, well she grew up in Montpelier and her father and mother used to walk downtown and I'm sure you've all seen them, Ernest Gibson and his wife Charlotte and Ernest Gibson as you know served as a superior court judge and also on the Supreme Court. And so here she is from East Montpelier but all three, welcome them please. And before I turn it over I'm supposed to give you two notes, one, turn off your cell phones. Oh, there's one or two people who have to do that. And the second one is there are more pamphlets of what's to come and also at the piano there are pictures of what's to come. So without further ado, I don't know, do you want this mic on or not? George? I'd love to. Okay, so he's going to try it without the mic and if he needs it then he'll pick it up and if I turn it off just press this little button on the side. Anyway, thank you for coming and I'm sure we're going to have a great time. My husband participated in the senior games, those of you who were here last week know that and I have found it to be really wonderful thing for older adults and I think Margaret's going to tell you what her response is when I was talking about whether or not people our age were too old to pick up the discus. Thank you very much. George? Oh, could I have the lights off? That would be super helpful. Thank you. And you can see my beautiful colors. Okay, I'm George. I am the games coordinator of the Long Senior Games Association. We have one of the cooler logos around I think. I see some of the other states are not so great. As you can see, we started in 1983 and I would echo the sentiment that we have so many stories of athletes who have just started because friends said, oh, you should try this because a lot of women in particular didn't do a lot of athletics back in your day. And one of our greatest athletes, Flo Myler, only got into senior games because our Jordan talked her into it. And Flo is now 89 and a world record holder in multiple events. Anything's possible. Okay, so see if I can just sing for you. Okay. So first of all, I want to say something about my PowerPoint. As it says here, I used to be a high school teacher. And because I used to be a high school teacher, I know a little bit about how people learn. And some people learn very well verbally. Some people need to read and process things. So I am going to, I know you know how to read, but I will read what I have on here and hopefully between one of the two modalities you'll be able to process the information. So again, I am the games coordinator for the Long Senior Games Association. And my role is that I'm the liaison between the athletes, the individual sports coordinators and the various venues that we use around the state. I'll get all into this later on. I'm also the link between the state and the national senior games. If something happens at national, it comes to me. If something happens at national, I send it to national. Before Dominique, the Monty Games Association, I taught history at Rochester Middle High School for 30 years. And I also served as athletic director and coach of multiple sports. So I had never heard of senior games six years ago, even though I was pretty involved in athletics. So that's one of our challenges, getting the word out to the people. So I'm really glad to be here and share with you. My co-presenters, Barbara Gibson from East Montpelier, again a track and field athlete who has participated in national senior games multiple times. In 2022, she won the national championship in her age group in both the Long Jump and the Triple Jump. And she told Sarah and I that she's interested in trying to get into her roles which the senior games don't offer. So she's going to be looking into some master's events. And picture on the left there, I'm Margaret Sarah with my good friend from Rochester, St. Verwal at the Pittsburgh Senior Games. Sorry, not changing. There we go. Hey Sarah, Sarah has participated in multiple senior game sports, but swimming is her passion. She's gone to national senior games many times and has a large collection of medals and podium ribbons earned in freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly, relays and individual mentally events. She told me I had backstroke on here and had me take it out because she's not one of the metal and backstroke. But I believe backstroke is part of the mentally... It's part of the IM. Right, so technically she's not a metal and backstroke. And she's also started to compete in other senior games championships and she'll probably tell you about that when she speaks later on. The picture of her there is at the pool at the University of Pittsburgh where we had the national meet. That pool was ridiculous. It was like how many lanes? Like 30? It was the biggest pool I've ever seen in my life. And the stands were packed. It was really, really cool event. Really cool. Oops, hold on. Wow, big jump. Okay, how it works. So here's the basic breakdown. The Vermont Senior Games Association is the state affiliate of the National Senior Games Association. There are branches of the NSGA all over the country and in Canada and I think there's some in some of the Caribbean islands as well although we tried to check that I wasn't able to verify it. At the state level we stage state championships each year in 14 or more sports for athletes 50 and over. The results are determined in five here age increments so 50 to 54 is one age group. 55 to 59 is another age group. Our oldest athlete this year was 91. And the way it also works is we do medals in each age category and then the medals are also broken down by each individual event. So for example in track and field if we have an event like the discus we give a gold medal, a silver medal, a bronze medal to every man and woman and five year age group so we give out a lot of medals. Which is cool. They're nice medals too. And then the state games serve as the qualifiers from the National Senior Games which are usually held every year. So the rules for that vary by sport. A sport like golf for example only the top person gets in because golf is so popular and the competition takes a really long time. But on other sports such as triathlon anybody who competes he goes to nationals and triathlon is trying to encourage more people to do it. So there's no hard and fast rule by sport. Most sports is the top three. And also I want to mention that the BSGA is part of the Vermont Council, Vermont Governor's Council on Physical Fitness. This is my biggest slide. So on the left is our calendar of events for this year. So you can see we started May 21st with swimming. Then we did a pickleball tournament in Berry and then over a Labor Day weekend. We did 10K road race in Montpelier. We did track and field in Burlington. We did the 1500 meter power rock which was at the track and field meet. Then we had the National Senior Games right in the middle of our season. And then the way our season went this year was that's when it started raining. And so the triathlon got rained out. Racquetball got canceled. Our golf barely took place. The course was closed for three days before we played. It was unbelievable that we even got out there. Tennis our last day was rained out. We had rained a pickleball. The 5K was beautiful. Beautiful day on 5K. Sightling was touching all the whole time but we got it in and then basketball and table tennis were inside. And table tennis was Saturday and court rain all day. It was really great to be inside. So a little bit of background here. The Green Mountain Senior Games began back in 1983. That was the original name of it. And I believe your medal is the Green Mountain Senior Games medal. Right? Very nice. I'll get to that. Good question. So I don't know why they changed the name to Vermont Senior Games before I was involved and I wasn't able to find anybody who knew. So I don't know the answer to that. So at first the games were held in one location over a short span of time like the regular Olympics. In the 1990s they were regularly held at Green Mountain College in Polney. In some states like New York still staged their games in this manner. In New York they have the senior games at Cortland State University and most of the games in Massachusetts are Springfield College and it's kind of an Olympic fashion all of one week. We went away from that because what we discovered is it limited what the athletes could do. You couldn't do a lot of different things because if you space it out we have people who do multiple sports like Sarah. The other thing was as I was mentioning I'm the only paid person and I'm part of time. Everybody else is volunteer and if we do an Olympic week like that everybody else. Most of us are quite pleased with the way it works. So in any case for many years there were winter events held as well. However as time went on it's proved to be too much for volunteer staff and the one person I know Betsy who was around during this time he just said it was just all out all year long and they just couldn't keep up with it. The other thing is Don Kellerman who was running the problem at the time passed away and with his expertise and the winter sports went with it and so it just kind of evolved that way. The season was made to stagger the games over the spring, summer and fall months and to only offer sports officially recognized by the National Senior Games. In 2023 the first competition as I said took place on May 21st and the last was on October 21st. So I should mention that you are allowed to offer other games such as skiing which is not recognized by the National Senior Games. The most unusual state sport that I know of is the state of Maine offers buoy tossing which is exactly what it sounds like. And the Massachusetts has a hot internment which is really big but we just again don't have the acclaim to do that at this point. So we like to spread the venues around the state and that's probably the one thing I'm most proud of with my involvement in the senior games when I joined it really was the chip and how many senior games everything was in chip and cow just about. And so I've worked really hard from my 700% of the law perspective to kind of spread things out and I think that's been a really positive development for us. So as it says here currently we're swimming at the Gagher Maze Center in Springfield and that's one of those things that as an organization I'm just super proud of. When I started we had our swim meet was at the Gagher Wilson and then when COVID hit we shut that facility down it's not even like gym anymore it's a warehouse or something. So then we kind of floundered around and had a couple of events in an outdoor place in Essex which was okay but it wasn't great and then I was just totally lucky to find, running to this guy who runs the Maze Center and we offered the host to me and it was just so cool to go down there this year we had the biggest tournament we ever had even though it was in Springfield and we are so excited to make our partnership with him. We tried really hard to become good partners with the people we work with and I'll talk about that in just a second as well. So Springfield football was in Barry, the track and field when he isn't Burlington. We played golf at the Ralph Mottet course Bill Berry Vermont State University's castle in the campus, host for cycling and basketball the bridges at Sugarbush has been home to the tennis tournament for a few years now and Table Tennis takes place at the Sheldon Town gym. The State Championship Pickleball tournament is so big that we need two fan venues Airport Park and Culture and the VSGA also partners for the Central Vermont Runners to stage the road races the 10K is in Montpelier the 5K Run Power is in Northfield and we also partnered with Vermont Sun to offer the Triathlon which is a little late done one. So that's a lot of information but that's basically the overview of what we do on the nutshell. This is a really interesting slide because this is the overview of what we've done in the last decade in terms of sports and in terms of how many people participated and you can see there's some really interesting stuff in here. So let me just start out by pointing at the bottom line here the total this is how many total athletes we've had all the sports combined and so you can see back in 2012 we had 351 and this year email was a bit of a down year we had 635 so we've almost doubled our participation in the last decade. It does take people up and down whether it's a qualifying year for national senior games because that motivates more people to participate. So you can see in 2016 we had 615 people and they asked the rest up there top is indicating that that was a qualifying year for national senior games and then the next year we got 434 because there was no qualifying. I should also just mention I personally think those numbers in the blue there for the 5K are completely misleading because I was told by somebody that they just counted everybody who ran the race whether they were seniors or not so I don't think those numbers are at all accurate so that's why I have them in blue and the same thing happened in the 10K but I'm not able to verify that so and I should also mention that was one of the reasons why I would talk about the partners being so important is that the center Vermont runners are so great to work with because they do the registration for us they give me the information and we do have people who are not seniors running in those races they aren't just senior only races but the CVR separates them out for us and it's very, very well done whereas other people we work with for the road races we're not really willing to do that and we're not super helpful so when I talk about getting good partners that's what I'm talking about you also can see the sports that we have phased out racquetball bowling and horseshoes and I can tell you although not supposed to that racquetball isn't going to be dropped as a national senior game sport in the next few years so racquetball we cannot host a racquetball tournament anymore because the biggest racquetball facility in Vermont that we are aware of is two courts you can't have a tournament with two courts so we were partnering with New Hampshire and they were doing the same thing they just phased it out because no one's signing up it's just the sport is dying pickleball on the other hand yeah state championship pickleball started with 43 and last year we had 186 and it sells out we can't handle more than 186 so it's certainly we're not taking any more registrations that's how crazy popular it is so in any case you can see though we've done well the last couple of years and as you can see the swimming 32 swimmers this year was by far the largest we've ever had so that was a really really nice turn out for us I also think you know triathlon has been pretty consistent number wise having it rained out if we had had the triathlon our numbers of course would have been higher so the other sport that we did really well this year was golf our sports coordinator Kevin Pleat voted that and since he took over sports coordinator in 2020 you can see it's gone up quite a bit last thing I want to mention about this chart is 2020 you can see during the year of covid we actually had three events only we were the only state in New England that had any events at all so we were really proud to even put on three events and I should also mention one of the things that happened in covid that was really great was I joined the national the brazilian games in 2019 and everything was done in person in burlington and when covid hit we couldn't do that and so one of the things that happened during covid is this how we made now zoom and if you're on zoom you can do that from anywhere so did that make my life easier you bet it did you know what else it did it allowed us to get other people who live in different places so we have Jim Flint who's our running guy he lives in west rutherland Matt Kyle who's our webmaster and it's really helped us to expand our group of people and be a much stronger organization it also makes it easier for us to talk to our partners and venue hosts we're just a set of zoom calls and talk to them, it's great so that's been a really positive development so the covid was an awful year and that was one really positive thing that came out of it okay now I'm just going to show you some various pictures this is where the point will be much more fun so on the left this is from our track in philly in burlington which we had waiting for that as well but at least we got it in and that is Margo right there 618 and that looks like 50 isn't it and that's Sandra Wall next to her and I don't remember who the woman number six is I don't remember on this picture over here this is our swimming and you can see all the medals on all the people's just Sarah is right there in the middle right here and you can see she's won just a few medals over there as a nice thing about these pictures you'll see everybody is so happy that's one of the wonderful things about organization is that it's just a really really welcoming and positive environment the bottom picture was at the pickleball tournament in berry and these people they were just wonderful to work with Dave Roulot sitting in the center was the mastermind behind this tournament and it was just a really really good time the other random pictures and I don't think there's really a whole lot to say about any of these they're all pretty self explanatory but again just a lot of smiling faces and they love the picture on the bottom right because one of the things that is really cool about our organization is there's competition but it's friendly competition and that is Peter Mitchell there who's 83 went to nationals and track and field and in the row races and I think that's one of the French Canadian guys that she hands with I'm like 100% sure about that okay more photos here that 10k row races in Montpelier starts and finishes right outside of Union River sports I heard that they're not going to be reopening there but it was before the flood so it was a really nice place to be and the finish is really cool because they turn and they go down that street spacing on the name of it right now it's a one way street and it's just a really cool that we'll run out right in front of Capitol building out to a high school and back the woman in the middle with the purple shirt her name's you know she is a wonderful person and I put her in here because this was at the 10k Northfield and the 5k Northfield and they had a kids race and she finished the race and the kids race was coming up and she was like charging the kids to run and I said yeah that's the central amount where there's policy she goes here's 80 bucks the next bunch is on me so it was so nice and I told these people really but that's the kind of people we have in our organization just really really nice this woman in the top center here she's from the in this room down here from Connecticut she's from the shopper and one of the other things that we did this year again Jim Flint that's all the credit he got this veterans group in Woodstock to participate in our 5k race where the veterans who participated I don't remember the name of the organization but that was a new outreach for us which was really great this guy right there he was an oxygen and he walked the entire 3 miles pulling his oxygen it was really inspirational I mean he finished last and everybody cheered up and he said it was great okay national senior names are held but because of COVID we've just come off two consecutive national games in 2022 Florida was the whole city this year's games were played in Pittsburgh and I always love this fact more athletes participate in the national senior games than in the Olympics it's the truth there were 11,037 Olympians in Tokyo and we had 11,576 in Pittsburgh and I felt like we took over that you guys didn't you said Albuquerque was even better would you talk about that later and so the cool thing we did in Pittsburgh was they invited us all to go to a Pirates game and this is outside the Pirates stadium we got to march in they marched all over the field and it was really a cool experience whoopsies come on okay the 2023 nationals by 7th through 18th in various venues around Pittsburgh 86 Vermont athletes participated including the two you have here today as a group the BSGA won 9 national championship gold medals 11 silvers and a dozen bronze medals in addition the NSGA awards honorary ribbons for 4th through 8th finishes so all total 41 Vermonters won at least a medal or a remit so almost 50% made the podium the guy on the upper left is Chris Hamilton who won the national championship in the discus this is Elizabeth McCarthy who lives in Hardwick runs all the road races and she does track and field on the two women on the upper left are Joan Weir and Susan Madrigan from gravel borough they won the doubles title in their age group and then these two guys here actually are both Vermonters they were in the singles finals in the men's 50 to 54 that's Joan Tishiro and this is Damon Fitch they're both from Burlington but that was the coolest thing ever we had two people from Vermont in the tennis finals I mean who would ever have fought that and they played a great match and John beat them out but they're really good friends and it was so much fun to watch them play the other thing that was interesting was it was very well routed performance by the Vermont athletes we earned podium honors in 11 different sports basketball, cycling, golf, pickleball power walk, road race swimming, tennis, triathlon and track and field and actually there are two different road races so actually it's 12 different sports because we won both the 5K and the 10K the people on the bottom right there that's the group who ran the 5K and they had those cool Vermont shirts that women the women here today are wearing and they were just so much fun to be with and that's Sarah there on the left with the women who did the swimming what event was that on? that was triple job that was triple job and one of the cool things is you weren't competing with people from all over the country so you're meeting these people that you never knew and you never see again and that's also really really cool the guy on the bottom right was doing the Javelin his name is Zane Rodriguez he lives in Norwich he's a really really good Javelin thrower and he was throwing and this guy he was in a particular distance and his next guy up through like even farther and he comes back to me and he said somebody just told me this guy used to play majorly big sport and I was like what? can you look it up for me? so I keep my phone out and I look it up and sure enough this guy pitched for the Yankees and the Mariners back in like the 1990s and then he had elbow surgery and ended his career but he was sorry he was like usually baseball was so cool Zane came and said come on so the picture on the left is Matt Gile, the webmaster from Bella's Falls he won the 800 meter race which is two laps around the track and his story was really great he won the 400 and the 400 prelands and then he fell literally leading you from the finish line and he was way ahead so it was like heartbreaking so we came out to watch him the next day just to support him and he won the best race he was so smart he would let the whole way he went by like 20 yards which is a lot in that 800 and then two days later he won the mile as well so he had a really really good race and I met this guy from Connecticut who was really really friendly with us the guy from Connecticut was there all by himself the finished second so he hung out with us for quite a while I can't remember his name, he's a really nice guy what's the question? Matt, Matt is he's in the he's in the 55 to 50 million group pretty sure no, no, no, no, he's not he's in 16 to 64 that's in 60 to 64 and then the picture on the left there is all of us who went to the Pirates Game you can see I am not in the light blue shirt because I've had multiple knee surgeries and I'm not an athlete anymore so I didn't feel like I should wear the athlete's shirt so I wore an old shirt instead so I'm in there in a dark blue but that was our group that went into Pittsburgh beautiful city, really really nice what was the time of the fellow on the mile distance? oh, it was four something yeah, it was fast he's a very serious athlete people were really really serious and people aren't very serious he's a serious one so the last thing Vermont Senior Games also has a very unique tradition that we do to honor the confidence of our athletes at Nationals March 15th, 2023 was officially proclaimed Vermont Senior Games Day by Governor Full Scott athletes were invited to the State House in Montpelier for a ceremony that included a house resolution we also did a press conference and a private audience with a Governor in a ceremonial office the March ceremony was to honor the 2022 National Senior Games athletes, we plan to have another ceremony next winter to recognize the athletes who went to Pittsburgh and know what a state does but they only state that does this and I tell them the states that would do this in their life they did these blank looks what you really do that and I have to say both of you were there Governor Scott was wonderful and he was authentic he was not just he he was really really engaged with the athletes he was funny he took a picture with every single person he gave us a lot of his time it was a really really nice time Sarah is right here and Margaret's right back behind her okay there's a picture of Margaret with Governor Scott really good picture and the picture on the bottom right is doing the press conference and the guy with the long beard his name is Gerud Hall who's from down south Dumberston and he was national champion in pickleball yeah oh and I should also mention that's Flo are super sorry oops I'm sorry look at that sorry this is being so finicky too far away yeah that's Flo right there and the other thing that's really cool with my position is I know all these people because I'm the only one who goes to the event so I can tell you who everybody on this picture is um and um it's really just fun to see them all out of the sports arena just one of them every year okay so my final thing I want to say about this from my perspective the best thing about my experience for the BSGA has been all the wonderful people that I met over the years with Margaret and Sarah included it's an exceptional feeling of being part of a remarkable group and a team you really feel part of the whole thing and um everybody is so well doing and um you know it just it just positive all around that's it so what I'll do now at this point is I'm going to turn it over to our athletes and um yes and they'll each take a turn talking about their experiences thank you for your time those pictures were great George thank you for sharing those um I am not a public speaker so bear with me as I look at my cheat notes here um and I don't want to talk too long but um I just want to start by saying that being part of the senior games is inspiring um I got involved about nine years ago when I saw a news clip featuring Flo whom you've all heard about and at the time she was 80 um and they were talking about how she was talking about track and field including pole vault which she took up at age 65 who does that at age 65 will flow and now of course she own you know has world records in multiple age groups along the way including the Decathlon that she just competed in as the first woman at age 89 to ever do so anyway she's just back from that needless to say Flo is still going strong and is still my inspiration that news story years ago ignited my curiosity I was 54 at that point in my life my days revolved around full time work and watching my kids do their sports I wasn't doing anything to stay fit or active in my life at the time and um I also wasn't really doing anything just for me so in a brave moment I took the plunge signed up for the Vermont senior games long jump happening in three short months and then there was no turning back so when I first started sprinting I had a lot of pain in my hips um due to 30 years of sitting at a desk job and I was googling my things like how do you know if you need a hip replacement and um but a physical therapist told me that she gave me a lot of hope but she just said uh when you know injuries come and go and you just work through them so that was what I needed and the hope that got me to stick with it she was right I worked through it slowly and now at 62 I can do things I couldn't do back then and I'm in much better shape fast forward eight years so I've been to eight Vermont senior games I've been to three nationals Flo and I are now friends we train together on occasion and even room together at nationals um my roommate my training partner I should say Sandra Wall good friend of Georgia's she comes to train with me every week she drives an hour to come here to train with me at the U30D track we do that all year long and then when the weather turns we go do that at UVM the indoor track up there so um you know I've gained Sandra as a wonderful friend and also I've added events along the way so including jumps like the long jump the high jump the triple jump um I do the 50 and 100 meter sprint and I'm just like George mentioned trying hurdles which is a little scary but a good challenge so to wrap up being involved in track and field as a senior has been really added so much to my life it's given me a sense of purpose it's gotten me through some rough times because it's something that I'm doing for me and having that competition ahead gives me the extra push I need to keep at it and stay fit and as George mentioned it's a wonderful community of people at all fitness levels coming together to be active and have fun as you heard also the senior games has all kinds of sports so I just encourage if you're thinking about doing it find one that you love and just do that I recommend track and field because there's a low bar for entry with 14 events there's something for everyone whether you want to throw something walk or run around the track or jump and I'm so grateful for the senior games and for that opportunity that makes it possible for us seniors to stay active engaged, have fun and be inspired My name is Sarah I didn't prepare anything so I'm just going to go off the cuff here participating in the Vermont senior games about as long as Margaret I started the year I turned 50 and I did my first swim meet I heard about it through one of the swimmers I met through the masters group that I was swimming with at the time and he said you're turning 50 this year aren't you and he said well why don't you come try senior games competition he's like no no no come on up you'll win medals oh well then let's see what we can do about this so I went at a tender age of 49 because senior games start the year you turn 50 I turned 50 in December and that swim meet was actually in June so there I was 49 years old and I'm like sure you're being here yep I'm here, I'm here I did two events the 50 free and the 500 free and I got a gold in both of them but I have not been able to stop I haven't been able to look back I have encountered a few musculoskeletal issues and the next year when I did senior games I only did freestyle events but I have since branched out and I'm now doing the 200 fly just become one of my favorite but what I wanted to talk about also with senior games is you've got people like me I actually do the start competitively swimming close the year I turned 50 I could swim, I swam lacks in college I did it to stay in shape and I just went back and forth and back and forth and did my own sort of self imposed flip turn that was probably atrocious but I did it but I have since learned better technique, better skill and then this year I went to New Jersey and did their state senior games and I did the 200 fly and I got a personal best which was really exciting but also during the 200 fly was a man in the 80 to 84 age category and he did it in 12 minutes to give you comparison my time was 3 minutes and 44 seconds so I passed him, I passed him I finished, he's going he's doing his best I would come over to the next lane and did a cool down I got out and he's still going and he's still going so we're all cheering and when he finishes with his two hand touch that's his rock star moment everybody on the deck is cheering for him because he took 12 minutes but he got there and he did it he was the one in there swimming and we're all on the deck watching him so that's what drive me to continue with the senior games and also like Margaret I've done three nationals to me as a swimmer I call him my swim con we show up, we hang out the pool for four days we're all in our swimsuits we're getting in and out, we're doing laps I could walk down the deck, I could be high five I'm just thrilled to be there everybody's like, how'd you do? I did it well done, you're here it's a really, really supportive, encouraging environment it's a lot of fun I have to say I'm not super close with my relatives they're not super supportive about what I do they're not discouraging but they pretty much don't have anything to do with it but senior games, it's filled with people who are like, high five, well done so I have branched out to Power Walk and I did the bike race last year on a borrowed bike that I rode four times before I did the event I came in last but so what and I also did the triathlon at Nationals because I could, I trained up for it my goal was to do the triathlon try to do it in an hour 45 and do the run without stopping and that's what I did and I was last as well but I was out there doing it and that's really what it's all about like Margaret said, take a look at the website see what we offer pick something, come out and say hi if you're not comfortable competing, come volunteer we always need people to help out with that and you'll see how friendly and what a wonderful, warm supportive group it is that's really what it's all about and it's a lot of fun so I encourage everybody to come say hi we've got a medallist right here I'm sorry we're not doing winter games anymore but Massachusetts does still have some winter games there's snow this year that's the problem with winter games isn't it so anyway I thank you for listening do you have coaches you can get coaches, I don't and senior band doesn't offer them but I know a lot of people through the swimming group there's a masters group that swims and I know there are probably track and field people who can hire their own coaches but they're not coordinated through senior games and I assume you have to pay your own freight when you go to one of these events yes, that is one of the questions that people have asked the Vermont senior games are very, very affordable the swimming I think is $35 and you can do up to six events and then there's three laid out awards I think the most expensive might be some of the track and field it was up to golf because it's golf we have to pay the course fee but I know the senior game the Vermont senior games also offer scholarships for people who are not comfortable unable to pay the fee but yeah we have to drive ourselves to the venues and then when it comes to nationals nationals is $180 I think for the one event and then it's $35 for second event which is why I added the triathlon because I'm like it's $35 bucks we're neither $35 but you don't so and I drove and I could take my bike but then I had to pay my own gas and accommodation and meals so yeah it can add up I'm hoping to find a sponsor one day as well so any questions for anybody we'll have a comment more than a question really inspirational that's really wonderful I have a very small village of family and we have races there and two women who are incredible are the Spires and Darvin does the triathlon international and I want to say Donna is the physical therapist that was told me that injuries come and go and she's right she's had some injuries since but you just wanted to listen to your body and take your time but yeah she's got to know she's got to know 100 mile miles right, the ironman the ironman is there a medical staff at the event you're working there's you so that will really depend on what the event is so for example we had table tennis this weekend we did not have medical staff present however the facility we're in the rescue squad was literally on the other side of the parking lot we do have an emergency action plan for all of the events we do so again it's certain events like basketball, we had an EMT there and we needed her we had several people get knocked over and one guy I thought had a concussion we don't want 85 year olds playing basketball against each other it's scary scary and I was really glad she was there in the traffic field we will have a a trainer there but again for like golf we didn't have anybody there but again the rescue squad was just down the road so we do consider that we are trying to get a grant to get an AED which we think we should have and we don't AED it's a familiar a lot of the facilities that we go to like the table tennis and swimming they've got one there but other places don't and the other thing I should mention is this spring 6 or 7 of us have seen games for CPR for state trained so I wish we had the resources to have somebody there for the event but we do put thought into it and we're in a lot better place than we were a few years ago where we really didn't have it was just like hope things go well but that's a great question Sarah said that she had been a swimmer in high school I'm wondering what sports you had done before you started back in your early years my early years I did tracking field in high school back then you all probably know you didn't start when you were 3 doing things you start when you were in high school so I did tracking field in high school and I did one year of college along jump and so that's really why I got back into it because I was just curious to know what I could do again of course your legs are really different your legs are near 20 also just to add on to that there's some sports for example pickleball didn't exist and so everybody who was there a pickleball tournament has learned as seniors to play that's definitely something that is doable and pole vault you couldn't pole vault or triple jump in high school back then for women that was the guys did that they were at triple jump 3 years ago so not many women my age do triple jump it's sort of like a long jump but you're doing three steps so they measure from the third step and it's kind of a technical event not many people do it but you can meddle doing triple jump because not many people do it for example how did you learn to do this how did you learn to technique for triple jump I had coach who taught me I found her on porch form she's a really great she still holds multiple records at high school level so she's like now 27 ish so I started out with some help from her I want to comment what Margaret said about there's not very many people who do triple jump there's also at the Vermont level there's often not very many people in each age category in most events so you have a very strong chance of meddling regardless of what you do or how well you do it and that's just a real morale booster but what we say is not my job I'm the one who shows up and does the thing so there you go it's really a morale booster we had a guy who was a table tennis on Saturday who was 73 and he played in a tournament and said it was the first time he played table tennis in 30 years and he lost every match he played and still got a bronze medal in his age group and he was thrilled so the other thing I should mention too is although the national senior games kind of frowns on this but it's because they don't understand the logistics of Vermont we combine age groups a lot so like when both of you when you go and run an event she's not going to be all these people in her age group it's going to be younger and older people and I personally think that's a really cool thing and we had a guy in tennis this year who was 84 and he was the only person who was playing who was over 75 and he played him with all these other people and he said to me after the event he said George that was the most fun I've played playing tennis in years because I got to play different people who I'd never played before and he won his age group because he was only one and he didn't win any matches but he had such a good experience and that's kind of what we're talking about you had your hand up before what is it about pickleball people are crazy and I can't have you guys want to comment on it I can just say from personal experience I can't play racquet sports because I've had knee replacement and there's one thing they didn't want me to do but I have played like hit the ball two times and the thing that was incredible to me is I'm not a good tennis player by any stretch of the imagination I felt totally competent to play pickleball in about 15 minutes it's so easy to learn it's so easy to learn and I think the other thing that is really popular about it is it's a very social event because most people play doubles and I haven't thought about this but the court is so much smaller than tennis that you can't help but interact with the people you're playing with and I think that's a real reason why it's so popular and the other thing is mixed doubles it's a really good way to meet people I'm sorry I cut you off I'm so happy to see all these young women participating and they are young to me when I was in school in the 30s and 40s girls didn't have a chance to be unwedded or could play basketball and stopping the movement and doing any of these things and now you're out there working towards your personal best and the competition isn't learning and nearly it's down on females that still lives in many cases and reaching your personal best is so important and I've seen the games everyone cheers for you it's a very good group support so I'm glad that women are out there that's all and the venues provide their facilities for free it depends on the venue swimming is a great example with swimming it's a community center down in Springfield and what they did was they had a fee which they agreed to waive for us but what we did was we then gave a donation to their youth swim club so because we figured they're losing all this business by us being there for a whole morning so it depends on the venue we pay for the track and field and the road races we don't pay tennis we pay a court fee for tennis but we don't pay for pickleball so it really depends on the sport that reminds me I want to comment about the venues are also some of them are very community oriented like George mentioned the swimming is at the Springfield pool and they were very welcoming their staff were there on hand to help us to help check in the staff lined up for volunteers to help with the timing and count the laps on the 500 and it really it just brings out that group too and they're all cheering us on as well and then the same with the 5K it doubles as the run and the power walk and that is piggybacked onto the 5K fun run that Northfield does just kick off their Labor Day weekend and so the Central Vermont runner they oversee it but yet it's also this community organization the townspeople come out they're cheering us on and the people volunteering so a lot of the senior games events are in venues and in situations where it's also very community oriented it's not just we show up we do our thing and we leave there's lots of other activity around it it's very welcoming, it's very nice very Vermont-y yes and again I should also mention that's not the way most other states do it the most other states they have a specific senior games event that's run by their group and there's no mixing of the ages or a lot of our events are mixed so a lot of us love to go out and cheer you guys on I love it we even did one here with a younger we did that's right yeah yes yes that's one of our challenges we have had a really hard time getting media to do much of anything I mean the first year I was with senior games I would send out a press release after every single event and basically nobody would print it on the flip side the Hardwick Gazette which Jim Flint writes for they have Jim writes an article for them every single week which is heavily senior focused so it really depends on the media it's on Jamie Dicca is it time service I know yeah the best place to get our information is on our website I know for some people that doesn't work but that's where we're at at this point any questions comments if not I don't know can you hear me or do I need the mic good so I want to thank George and Margaret and Sarah sorry I remember it's Bombardier you're French Bombardier Bombardier Bombardier we used to have Bombardier drinks over in Berrytown so anyway thank you for coming and they'll stick around for a few minutes afterwards for personal questions and inspiration if you decide to take something on but don't forget to turn your tags into Alice and then Marge over there and thank you all for coming I hope to see you next week