By Breven Honda

Last month, the Mesquite Senior Games held its final event of 2024 with its annual holiday bowling event. 

Held at the Virgin River Lanes, there were more than 100 participants in the 9-pin no tap tournament on Dec. 7.

With the theme of “Santa’s Helper,” close to a dozen people took their attire to the next level by dressing as elves.

“It went great,” Mesquite Senior Games President Sandy Tudor said of the bowling event. “Everybody had a really good time and that’s what we’re after in this.”

The top scoring woman was Gail Parison. She bowled a 942 handicap series and a 699 scratch series.

The top scoring male was Doug Heiden. He bowled a 1,070 handicap series and a 799 scratch series.

One participant, Chuck Werner, was the only player to bowl a perfect game with 12 consecutive  strikes for a 300 score.

“He’s not even a league bowler,” Tudor said of Werner. “He’s always at our bocce events, and he’s always at our cornhole events. So, those are kind of similar motions.”

In addition to the competition in the lanes, the Mesquite Senior Games held a raffle while the bowling scores were being finalized.

Tudor said the raffle was a great opportunity to fill in the gap for handicap and scratch scores. 

“We had a lot of a lot of door prizes and gift baskets donated,” she said. “We have a program set up where we input their scores at the end of each game. While they were calculating all of that, we were able to raffle off the door prizes, the gift cards and everything we got. So, by the time we were through with that they had the scores and the medals so we could go right into that.”

In addition to awarding the players with medals, the Mesquite Senior Games also got to award four local charities.

The donations to these four local charities were through the registration fee and the would-be price of the swag bag for each participant.

The bowling committee realized that most of the bowlers played in a previous event, paving the way to give back ahead of the holidays.

As a result, the Mesquite Veterans Center, Kids for Sports Foundation, Special Olympics of Nevada and the Warrior Women of Mesquite non-profit group all received $250, respectively.

“We discussed it at a board meeting, and everybody threw out various organizations,” Tudor said on the thought process behind the four donations. “We decided to with one old group, which was the Veterans group, one kid group, which was Kids for Sports, and then two that a lot of the board members were either involved with or gravitated towards.

“The Warrior Women of Mesquite is a group that is real, near and dear to our heart because one of our board members, Beth Caplinger is a cancer survivor, and she and one of our good volunteers, Dawn Pecoraro, started this group. So, we donated to them as well.”

The bowling event does put a bow to the year, but that does not mean the work stops for the Mesquite Senior Games.

The board and the respective event coordinators have already begun planning for the 2025 spring season.

Tudor said the planning thus far has gone well and the board members, along with the event coordinators, will be ready.

“We’re really excited. This is what we do. This is our whole reason for being is to provide these games to people over 50, to keep them active, engaged and involved with the community and with each other,” Tudor said.

Table Tennis kicks off the 14-event schedule on March 8.

There will be some changes to the format of some events. The Mesquite Senior Games will have a golf tournament in the spring for the first time in a few years. This will be in addition to the long drive, closest to the pin and putting contests.

The pickleball and tennis events will both operate with less games for players each day to prevent the participants getting tired as each event progresses. Both have been shortened to three and four days, respectively.

Bowling will be a two-day event with doubles one day and singles on the other to prevent players from playing six games in one day.

The cornhole event will remain the same format but be at a different venue. It will take place at the Eureka Casino. This comes after the Mesquite Senior Games helped run the Veteran’s Day cornhole event in November at the hotel.

One of the other new changes is that the Mesquite Senior Games is updating their website. Caplinger and Sports Director Shawn Edwards are leading the website changes. Currently the website is under construction.

One of the main reasons for the new changes to the website is that photos were only able to be uploaded one at a time rather than as a group.

Tudor said the expectation is for the website to be ready in time for the first day of registration on Jan. 15.