Women 80 and older shoot and score on basketball team
THE COAST NEWS – May 15, 2009
By Kirsten Cummings and Linda Cord
SAN DIEGO – The Splash, a San Diego-based basketball team of athletic, and surprisingly agile, 80-plus-year-olds women, will once again compete at the National Senior Games this summer at Stanford, University in Palo Alto, CA.
These inspirational women, some of them North county residents, have played together for 13 years and are competing for their fifth gold medal.
Who are these women?
The Splash is an eight-woman team with all members 80 years of age or older. They have endured bruises, broken bones, cancer, death of loved ones and found joy in playing basketball. They are sister, mothers, grandmothers and friends.
Meg Skinner, a mother, grandmother and great grandmother who has lost her husband, plays alongside Cori Thompson, a former Marine who has beaten cancer. Player Grace Larson lives in Oceanside, and her teammate Dolly Scott lives in Encinitas.
“These athletes play serious basketball,” Kirsten Cummings, commissioner of San Diego Senior Women’s Basketball said. Cummings is a U.S. National team member and 14-year professional basketball player. These players play for the Senior Women’s Basketball Association which boasts more than 100 players, ages 50 to 84, and is the largest senior league in the nation. “SWBA has the honor of winning more medals at the National Senior Games (formerly called the National Senior Olympics) than any other league in the country. Not bad when you consider that there are nearly 100 teams competing.
The SWBA and The Splash play 3-on-3 half-court ball, using the NCAA basketball rules. Most of these exceptional players put on their shoes, tape up their skinned knees, bandage their worn fingers and practice two to four times per week, usually playing their games on Sunday.
“Through sweat, sometimes blood, and joy these women are living their athletic dreams,” Cummings said.
“For many of these pre-Title Nine women there wasn’t a place, nor the time for them to play basketball when they were younger,” Susanne Carvalho, director of the SWBA, said.
“It also wasn’t socially accepted. Through this league they have become a tight knit community providing each other with support and encouragement. They are an inspiration to the 100-plus women who make up the league and others who witness them in action.”
Watch these silver stars of the basketball world in action May 16 and May 17 at the Municipal gym in historic Balboa Park. Games begin at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m.
In August these amazing Golden Year athletes will compete for gold at the National Senior Games.
