Granny got game: Wake County team earns bronze at National Senior Games - WRALSportsFan.com

By Robbie Vaglio, WRAL.com intern

A love for the sport of basketball brought a group of five 80-year-old women together to win bronze at "the biggest event no one knows about."

For Nancy Tripoli, one of the players on this year's Fab 80's team, there is something special about basketball that keeps her playing the game.

"Whether it’s three people or five people, it’s just the right number," she said. "It’s not too big and it’s not too little. It’s not solo, so you have teammates and you have to cooperate, you have to learn to think the way they think and persuade them to think the way you think. It’s not just a pair which turns into a sticky relationship."

Tripoli added that she likes the game because it incorporates "every possible exercise you want."

Judy Barton, another one of the athletes. has been playing basketball at the senior level for 27 years and is the only player still competing in the games from her original team.

The National Senior Games, a biannual event, welcomes nearly 13,000 senior athletes from all over the country to participate in 20 different athletic events over a three-week period, making it one of the biggest gatherings of athletes around the world.

Despite its size, it still does not have the same exposure because it is not tied to the Olympic Games, Tripoli said.

"The Olympics have the regular Olympics and the Special Olympics and they are not interested in adopting another organization, meaning we can’t use the title Senior Olympics and that leaves us out of the publicity that we would otherwise get," she said.

This year it was held in Albuquerque. Birmingham, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Houston have recently hosted the games in this decade.

Despite the team's success this year, the Fab 80's did not participate in the Birmingham games because they didn't think they were good enough, Tripoli said.

"The Minneapolis games were rough," she said. "There was a lot of yelling and stamping your foot to keep someone, very old fashioned. In the two years since Minneapolis, the older women’s game just grew up and became real basketball. I really felt like I was playing basketball this time, not some decrepit version of it."

The qualification process for the games includes games against in-state competition. Tournaments begin at the local and county level and the teams that win those games advance to the state finals. The winner of the state finals will get the opportunity to play in the national games. Since there isn't a lot of competition for their age group, this will typically add up to four games, according to Tripoli.

Games at the senior games are three-on-three half court games. The team qualified with three players, but quickly recruited two additional players.

"We felt we couldn’t go to the nationals without any subs, so we picked up two substitutes," Barton said.

Despite both of the substitutes not being from Wake County, they were allowed to play for the Fab 80's in the senior games.

"Once you go on to the nationals, that doesn’t matter where you’re from, as long as you qualified where you’re from," Barton said. "You have to qualify in whatever state it is that you live. When it goes to nationals, you can pick up anybody from around the county."

Once you've qualified for nationals, you are allowed to play for any team that wants you, so the team recruited a player from Pitt County and another player from Pennsylvania.

"It worked out well, and with all the playing that we did, we were very much in need of subs so I’m glad we made the extra effort to get those two subs to go with us," Barton said.

Normally there are only three or four teams in the 80 years and older age group, but this year eight teams participated in the games. This made a huge difference, Barton said.

"It was tough for our age group to play that much," Barton said. "I don’t recall ever having play that much."

To prepare for the conditions of playing seven games in four days, Tripoli said she would condition her body by going on long hikes and playing longer in practice than she ever had.

"I took my walking sticks and my dogs and we went to the woods and chose paths that were uneven and hard to walk on and I started running," she said. "I used the sticks to straighten out and ease, but I wanted an uneven surface because I wanted it to endure everything."

The Fab 80's finished third to teams from San Diego and Tennessee, two teams which played very different types of basketball, according to Tripoli.

San Diego plays a "modern" game: They play far away from the basket and play with a lot more spacing and less contact. Tripoli said that San Diego's team is "an all-together spectacular organization and team and some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet."

"Tennessee played the old way, and I have bruises all over my body to prove it," Tripoli said. "They have one woman who plays like someone 10 years younger or more. She really makes it impossible. She always breaks through our guard defense, so I have to pick her up and that leaves my person open. That’s how come we couldn’t beat them."

Going forward, don't count this group of women out. They may still have more gas in their tank and there's rumblings that a few of them want to keep playing.

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https://www.wralsportsfan.com/granny-got-game-wake-county-team-earns-bronze-at-national-senior-games/18478150/

2019-07-01 13:32:00Z
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