By Tom Haley
TIMES-ARGUS
The National Senior Games to be held this month in Fort Lauderdale, Florida means a lot of different things to the athletes who will be going there. The event is about camaraderie, competition and traveling and seeing a new place.
It is also about staying in shape and recapturing one’s youth.
Jim Flint at age 63, Don Gilman at 81 and Stan Wilbur, 82, have some impressive youth accomplishments to try to replicate.
Wilbur and Gilman both played on 1958 state championship basketball teams — Gilman on a Rutland High squad that won the Division I title and Wilbur on the Burr & Burton team that copped the Division II state crown.
Flint competed in cross country, track and field and wrestling for the Salem High Generals, just across the Vermont border in New York state.
Gilman and Wilbur will be members of Vermont Maple, a team competing in 3-man basketball in the 80-84 age division.
Flint will compete in the 5-K and 10-K road races in the 60-64 age group.
They are veterans of the National Senior Games. Wilbur competed in his first back in 1995 when it was held in San Antonio, Texas.
Since, the annual competition has taken them to places like Minneapolis-St. Paul; Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisville, Cleveland, Birmingham and Albuquerque.
They all agreed that Albuquerque was extremely challenging because of the altitude.
They have missed the event the last couple of years because it was cancelled by COVID. The Games are normally held every two years but to get the schedule back on track, the event will also be held in Pittsburgh in 2023.
Flint pointed out that it is fun but also very competitive.
“Everyone is out there going for their very best. It is the thrill of competition. It is like we are kids again,” Flint said.
“We are kids again,” said Gilman, quickly correcting his friend.
The fields in the 5-K and 10-K are massive. Men and women, in all age groups, make up one mass of humanity, all in the same race.
There are stickers on the backs of the runners designating their age group.
Flint pointed out that when you spot a number in your own age group, it provides extra incentive to pass that person., The sticker is to a runner what a carrot is to a rabbit.
Flint and his wife Barbara lived in Burlington 25 years but decided they wanted to get into the country life again. That prompted a move to Craftsbury where they were each able to find jobs.
“Craftsbury is such an athletic area. There are a lot of races and there are trail races every Tuesday night in the summer,” Flint said.
Semi-retirement, though, brought a yearning to get back closer to home and they wound up in West Rutland.
“Then we found the Rec Center (the Rutland Recreation Community Center),” Flint said.
That is the meeting spot for Flint, Gilman and Wilbur. They meet in the building on the campus of the former College of St. Joseph early in the morning — Gilman and Wilbur polishing their basketball skills and plays in the gym and Flint putting in the miles to prepare for his road races.
“It has become a social place. You make so many new friends,” Rutland City Director of Recreation Kim Peter said.
“We love this place,” Gilman said, “I will be here until I can’t walk around any more.”
Flint will be running in a 10-K race in Montpelier and a 5-K event in Northfield this summer to qualify for the 2023 National Senior Games in Pittsburgh.
Peters has seen friendships form in her building, like the one between the basketball duo Gilman-Wilbur with Flint.
She has also seen those friendships bridge generations.
When most other school gymnasiums were closed due to COVID, the high school players came to the Rutland Recreation Community Center.
“They (Gilman and Wilbur) would be interacting with the high school players,” Peters said.
Flint is on the Senior Games board and he points out that there are myriad events, not only the ones that he, Gilman and Wilbur are coompting in.
“There are 14 or 15 different sports,” Flint said.
Sixty-four years after Wilbur and Gilman celebrated a high school state championship, they are still playing the game they love. They and Flint are sill competing.
It somehow seems appropriate that the Natioanal Senior Games are being held in Florida, the state where Ponce de Leon supposedly searched for the Fountain of Youth,
Wilbur, Gilman and Flint have found it.
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