It’s like the opening ceremony of the Olympics on a swelteringly hot day at a park in downtown Des Moines. Thousands of senior athletes, organized by state, parade in front of an amphitheater as part of the Senior Games Celebration of Athletes.
Some wear matching outfits. Others wave their state’s flag. A few even proudly display the medals they’ve won from the first few days of the 12-day competition.
Bonnie Bickett, a 72-year-old from Cedar Falls who marched in the Iowa section of the parade, said it's her first time playing in the senior games. She’s doing pickleball and tai chi.
"I actually got a silver medal for my tai chi, which was pretty exciting," she said.
Joyce Jones, a 95-year-old from Seattle, said she has been to every national competition since it first started in 1987, except one in 1991.
"I missed New York because I had to have this knee replaced," Jones said with a laugh.
It's thrilling for Jones that this is the first year there’s a category exclusively for people 90 and older in pickleball — the event’s most popular sport.
"It's going to get bigger every two years. There seem to be a lot more of us older seniors. I hope I can play till I'm 100," she said.
An opportunity for older athletes
This past week, 12,500 older athletes from all 50 states have been competing in Des Moines for the National Senior Games. The competition happens every two years and features more than two-dozen sports and games for athletes who are 50 or older.
Attendance at the national games is growing as the country’s population is aging in general. This year marks the second highest number of athletes in the games’ nearly 40-year history, according to Sue Hlavacek, the organization’s CEO.
"Everybody thinks when you turn 50 you’re old and can't do anything. But it gives an outlet, an opportunity for our athletes, socially, mentally and physically to participate," she said.
For TeAda Vigil, that outlet is shuffleboard.
Vigil held her cue and carefully slid her pucks across the floor on a skating rink turned shuffleboard court, trying to land on numbered squares to score as many points as she can without being blocked by her two opponents.
She came all the way from the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico to defend her gold medal. She likes games that involve strategy and accuracy.
"Each board is different, like, there's how many boards here? And they're all different because of the surface," Vigil said.
Vigil, who is 65, said she also looks forward to seeing other Native American women from across the country. She wants to make an all-Native team.
"There's a lot of camaraderie. We help each other out. It doesn't matter what age you are, we're here to play and have fun," she said.
Old sports and new sports
The games include a variety of sports, such as swimming, archery, cornhole and badminton. Organizers have also added several new sports this year, like beach volleyball, powerlifting and tai chi.
Racquetball is the only sport slated not to return for the 2027 games due to declining participation and difficultly securing courts, Hlavacek said.
"They've all been changed into something else over the years because racquetball has really declined across the country," she said.
Outside the racquetball courts at Wellmark YMCA in downtown Des Moines, Ingrid Callmann, a 69-year-old from Delaware, said the news is really disappointing.
"Unfortunately, it seems like it's changing at the times, but I feel people are going to pickleball because they're kind of lazy — exercise lazy," she said. "It helps with their reaction time, but they don't have to do as much running around."
The declining participation is partially due to the fact that some states don't have racquetball at the state level, making it harder for athletes to qualify for the national games unless they travel to another state, according to Joe Williams, the racquetball chairperson for the games.
"I lost probably 20 players from Minnesota because of that," he said.
Williams said he's still petitioning the Senior Games board to keep the sport for the 2027 games in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They will vote on the issue in December.
The games' most popular sport is pickleball, with nearly 2,200 participants registered, followed by softball, basketball, track and field and swimming.
At the YMCA on a Saturday afternoon, swimmers in their 50s and 60s lined up for contests in the 200 yard backstroke and the 100 yard IM — the individual medley includes four different swimming strokes.
David Guthrie, a 65-year-old from Houston who’s broken world records as a masters swimmer, competed in six events.
"That's the limit you can do. So I'm doing the three breaststrokes, 50, 100, 200. I’m doing the 100 IM, the 200 IM and the 100 butterfly," he said.
He said competing with older swimmers has been very inspirational.
"There's kind of a slogan that says, 'Get slow or slower,' and I don't subscribe to that. It's like, I don't want to get slower. I want to improve," Guthrie said.
Battling ageism
Improving athleticism with age is a sentiment Becca Jordre, a professor of physical therapy at the University of South Dakota, agrees with.
"We don't have a health care model, really, that looks at a 50-year-old athlete and says, 'Let's get you to be a great 80-year-old athlete,'" she said.
There’s a lot of ageism when it comes to senior athletes, Jordre said. She helped develop a specific test for senior athletes at the games after she realized one didn't exist.
Following a 20-minute examination of volleyball player Ilene Stubbs that included measuring her grip, joint flexibility and balance, Jordre sat down with the 65-year-old from Denver, recommending extra strength training to improve her game.
Stubbs said she feels the consultation was really useful.
"People can be healthy at our age, and I feel like so many people go, 'Well, you're old.' Like sometimes when you go in the doctors, they'll say, 'Oh, well, a woman your age this,' and I'm like, 'No!" she said.
