Field shuffles for position at SEMO Senior Games

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- "Old folks got a right to have fun, too," said Perryville resident Art Tayon.

Tayon and wife Euline are co-organizers of the Southeast Missouri Senior Games this week.

The four-day event is part of one of the more rapidly growing sports phenomena in the United States -- the Senior Olympics movement.

Senior citizens are no longer content to just sit around.

"I like to be active and sports is a good way to do that," said Joan Gibbar, 67, of Perryville.

Since the first senior Olympics took place in Southern California in 1969, there are now over 200 local and regional events throughout the country. There is also a national summer Senior Olympics in odd-numbered years, which began in 1987 in St. Louis, and a winter Senior Olympics in even-numbered years.

The Southeast Missouri Senior Games, in its second year, is the brainchild of the Tayons, who had participated in senior games at St. Louis since 1996, and former Perry Park Center physical fitness director B. J. Wilkins.

"The whole purpose was to get Southeast Missouri involved in this," Euline Tayon said. "We'd been to so many that we were pretty knowledgeable about it."

Included in a wide variety of events offered are bowling, shuffleboard, tennis, horseshoes, soccer kick, softball and football throws for distance and accuracy, table tennis, swimming, racquetball, race walk, cycling and track and field.

The Games began Wednesday with about 150 entrants, a few more than last year's total of 137. The majority of entrants are from Missouri and Illinois.

Among the competitors entered is Richard Cochran, a bronze medalist in the discus at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Cochran, of Lake St. Louis, Mo., participates in the age 60-64 class.

"He still breaks records wherever he competes," Art Tayon said. "He won the last national with a throw of 184 feet."

Art Tayon, 69, is also a national medalist. He was a third-place finisher in the javelin in the 1999 Senior Olympics at Orlando, Florida and took seventh in 2001 at Baton Rouge, La.

No creampuffs, these seniors.

Tayon is coming off heart-bypass surgery in February, which he said curtailed his training regimen.

Alfred Von Fange, 87, of Farmington, Mo., is the oldest participant at the Games, where the minimum age is 50. He'll compete in 11 events.

Of course, the dream of qualifying for the 2003 National Senior Olympics in Hampton Roads, Va., is on the minds of many, but to others like Margaret Hinkle there is much more to it.

"We love to travel and we love meeting people," Hinkle, a retired accountant from Robertsville, Mo., said, "and we've met a lot of nice people through the senior games."