The following is a firsthand account of the Bath Y Hoops team’s experience competing in the Maine Senior Games this past fall. Most of it is true, and it is short.

It is presented here in the hope it inspires those who read it to begin to consider participating in this year’s senior games next summer/ early fall. Basketball isn’t the only sport: The “Olympic” offerings include bowling, tennis, track and field, volleyball and bronco busting. Check out the website at www.mainesrgames.org for more details.

No Such Thing As A Small Victory

Five minutes into the second and final half of the game, the team from Rochester, N.Y., pulls ahead and I realize that our third and final game in the tournament will end as the first two did: With a loss. It’s the men’s basketball competition of the Maine Senior Games, a quasi-Olympics for the Metamucil crowd. Four half-court games are being played under the vaulted roof of the South Portland Community Center, eight 3- man teams divided into fiveyear age groups. Our team is composed of those 70 to 75 years of age, which happens to be the last age group listed.

Our team of four—two Franks, a Mark and a Bob — has been looking forward to this day in mid-September since the previous autumn. We play three days a week for an hour at the Bath Area Family YMCA. We compete, but barely. Our primary goal is not to get hurt. Having fun is number two, and winning is an afterthought. We have no set plays, no “X’s” and “O’s,” no broad arrows on a clipboard, no whistle, no defining strategy except to be careful out there.

We have a good time, but what is clearly visible in the formal atmosphere of the tournament is that we have never played, nor practiced, as a team. From the bench it is obvious: Our competition is not that much better, they miss the same percentage of shots taken as we do. Yet the score shows the true story: They won, we lost.

Our game is just one of four games being played simultaneously. Looking across the length of the parquet is a sea of bare scalps, of grown men chasing a fading dream. Almost every knee is wrapped in a brace of some kind.

Let’s face it, those of us in the 70-75 division are lucky to have somehow managed to survive the stark truth of hurt knees and arthritic hips. People die at our age, no getting around it. But the fact that we are on borrowed time means nothing when you’re out on the court, you get the ball, you see an opening, drive to the basket and leap a mere inch or two off the ground — but it counts as a jump — and the ball leaves your hand on its own, caressed farewell as it stops time to settle on the rim and drop through the basket.

It’s moments like these that transport us old hoopsters back to those days when Saturdays were spent shooting baskets for hours at the local Y, playing one pickup game after another until the sky outside began to darken. No one kept score then, either. What kept you going was the promise that the next shot would go in the basket. There was always the next shot, always the next exquisite loft of the ball as it leaves your hand, how could it be any simpler?

The decades between then and now disappear when that ball is in your hand and so what if you can only jump two inches, so what if the score shows a loss. Events like the senior games aren’t about winning. You win when you strap on your knee brace, remove your hearing aids and jog out to the court. You win when the opponent over whose head you just scored high-five’s you and says, “nice shot.” You win because when you play you escape time, even if it is just for those seconds suspended barely off the ground. At this age there are no small victories.

Upcoming Events in January

. Jan. 17 — Gymnastics
Meet
. Jan. 24 — Swim Meet
. Feb. 1 — Swim Meet