Could the LI Senior Games become extinct?

The cavalcade of the 2011 Long Island Senior Games looks like this:

Two sprinters, barreling down the straightway of the track, arms pumping, legs churning. For a heartbeat, it looks as if the taller, gray-haired man in second might pull ahead, but the shorter, muscular leader -- his well-developed biceps clawing the air in front of him -- holds on for first place.

The winner of that 200-meter race, 56-year-old John Brooks of Poughkeepsie, has been running since he was a teenager and was good enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials in his native Barbados.

The man who finished three-quarters of a second behind him, 54-year-old Stephen Gould of Merrick, first laced up a pair of spikes just four years ago.

While the sprinters burn up the track at Suffolk Community College in Brentwood, Janis Henderson, 64, of Mount Sinai, rears back on a nearby field and sends a javelin aloft. Henderson started jogging in 2003 to help regain strength following cancer surgery. Eventually, she migrated into the throwing events of track and field because, she figured, "I can throw things, especially when I'm mad."

Meanwhile, in the parking lot by the track, 80-year-old Al Lopez of Commack, a competitive bicyclist since the 1940s, warms up for the 10K road cycling race, as a group of eight children and grandchildren gather at the finish line to cheer him on.

These were just a few of the people ages 50 and older competing in the final day of the Games, and they are representative of the wide range of Act 2-age athletes this event has attracted during its 13-year history: Newcomers and veterans, serious athletes and older adults who just want to try new things -- often with unexpected success.

"It's opened up all kinds of doors for me," says Henderson, who was competing in the Games for the eighth year. In addition to track and field, "I do cycling now, boccie . . . I have the Long Island record for women my age in horseshoes. Go figure!"

Horshoes and pickleball, too
Yes, horseshoes are also on the 11-day-long Senior Games program, along with bowling, tennis, golf, swimming, pickleball (a combination of tennis, badminton and paddleball) and some activities that sound more like items on a cruise ship itinerary, such as shuffleboard and bridge.

Still, the variety of its program; the strength and versatility of some of its athletes can't change a sobering fact, one openly admitted by organizers: These Games are in trouble.

"Money," says Senior Games president Bob Kenney, a longtime sports official on Long Island, who also directed the Empire State Games, themselves an Albany budget-cut casualty. "That's the big problem. We're dependent on grants from [Suffolk] county and they've dried up." (While the local games are affiliated with the National Senior Games Association, they receive no money from the umbrella organization.)

Meanwhile, the number of participants at the Long Island Games (longislandseniorgames .org) is down as well: 310 individuals competed this year, down from 650 last year, and a high of around 800 a few years ago. Part of this year's decline might be because the Game's final day fell on Father's Day. Still, Kenney is concerned the Senior Games might not survive the next year or two. "That's a real possibility," he said.

More senior sports
Ironically, another factor hurting the Games is senior sports. Long Island has a robust and active over-50 population. Many of these people are competing already, often at higher levels, in their own leagues, teams, tournaments and races. "There has been an explosion of senior sports," Kenney acknowledges. "It's great, but it does hurt us."

Example: Up until a few years ago, many over-50 softball teams registered each year to play in the Games. But as the sport has expanded, and the number of senior leagues expanded, they are locked into their own schedules. Most no longer compete here.

Yet in some events -- such as the sprints -- there aren't that many opportunities for competition, so the Games are a magnet for top older athletes, such as the 200-meter winner Brooks (who also coaches track at Vassar College); Gould (a former PAL soccer coach in Merrick who took up sprinting when he began outrunning the youngsters during their drills); and Abe Bernstein, 73, of Manhasset. Ranked in the top 10 in the country, he won his age group at the Games.

In addition to such seasoned vets, the Games also provide an opportunity for old sports to take up new sports.

Jim Higgins, 63, of Rocky Point was competing for the 10th year. "I started here doing volleyball," he said. Once that was eliminated from the program, "I said to myself, 'Well, why not try the swim?' Now I swim and bike."

For $35, contestants were able to enter as many events in their age group as they wanted. (Golf, bowling and billiards, held at other venues, carried additional fees.)

As a college student in the 1980s, Robert Pasqual of Flushing, now 51, ran track for the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury. He still competes in road races on Long Island. Before this year's Games, however, he had not competed as a bike racer or a 400-meter runner; nor had his skills throwing a softball or football been tested since high school.

Yet he did all of those things at the Games. He brought along his friend, Mike Morgan, 64, from Jamaica, Queens. While Morgan has run the Long Island Half Marathon and completed 100-mile Century bike rides to Montauk Point, he had not, until arriving here, ever contemplated throwing the hammer in a track meet.

Yet after a brief tutorial on the field that morning, Morgan stood in the thrower's circle, swung the 5 kilogram (11-pound) weight on the chain around and around to get momentum and let 'er rip. It landed 51 feet, 5 inches away; good enough for third place in his 60-to-64-year-old age group. "That's nothing compared to what some of the serious guys do," Morgan said modestly.

Pasqual disagreed. "You got a medal and you didn't kill anybody!" he said, with a laugh. "Not bad considering you just learned how to do it 20 minutes before the event."

Indeed, hidden talents are discovered and explored at the Games. Mary Trotto, 64, a retired C.W. Post professor, has made a second career out of entering track meets -- and doing almost every event. Her competitions have taken her all over the country.

The weekend before the Long Island Senior Games, she was in Dallas, competing as the only woman in her age group in the national master's decathlon championship -- a sport tailor-made for Trotto because it consists of 10 events.

She could have taken a week off after the decathlon. Instead, she was here, she said, because "I have to keep an edge."

Perhaps Morgan, like Trotto, will get more serious about competing in track and field. Maybe not. Either way, he said, he was glad to have been part of it. "I came here to have fun . . . and I did," Morgan says. "I hope I can come back next year."

So do the organizers of the endangered Long Island Senior Games.