By Breven Honda
The mid-off season break rolls on for the Mesquite Senior Games, right in the middle between the spring season and the fall season.
Although there are still a few months out from the fall season, there is still always work to be done.
One of the most notable things is trying to get more help in any capacity ahead of the fall season. The Mesquite Senior Games are looking for people to assist event directors at events, be event directors, or even hold a position on the board.
Mesquite Senior Games President Sandy Tudor said none of the events that get put on by the non-profit organization can be done without the help.
“We’re always looking for volunteers,” she said on June 24. “I attended an expo for all kinds of nonprofits up at Sun City the week before, and most of them were there, you know, getting the word out about who we were, what we were, and looking for volunteer sign-ups.”
Although Tudor was able to get eight signups from that expo, more help is always needed.
One of the advantages of helping with the Mesquite Senior Games is the schedule of when help is needed with the events taking place in the spring and the fall and a couple of months around that for planning purposes.
“The benefit we have is the fact that our time frame for games is fairly limited,” she said. “We are not a year-round activity. We basically need volunteers for a couple months in March and April and then again in the fall.”
Tudor also added the biggest incentive comes with the interaction helpers make with fellow helpers and participants.
“A lot of it is the camaraderie with both the other volunteers and the athletes,” Tudor said. “It keeps people involved. (At the expo,) I talked to this one woman who said, ‘I can’t play anymore, but I could certainly be there to help.’”
In addition to this break in the schedule, it has given Tudor and the board more time to adapt to the new website, which was created at the beginning of this year.
“It’s doing really well,” Tudor said of the website. “We’ve done a lot of clean up on it in this downtime, so it’s a much better looking site, much more professional looking than when we first started it.
“We’ve gotten a lot of the pictures from the various events updated and included on the website. So, you can go to bowling and you can see not only the bowling results, but you can also see pictures from the Bowling Tournament.”
One of the next goals for the website team is adding photos from events from previous years and events.
Another task during the break also includes getting a start on the fall games. This fall, there are three events.
The first is the men’s softball tournament, scheduled between Oct. 4-14, depending on the age bracket schedule.
The second event is the fall golf tournament, slated for Nov. 5 at Coyote Willows Golf Course.
The third and final event of the fall season is the Holiday Bowling tournament. The date has yet to be determined sometime in December but will be at the Virgin River Hotel and Casino Bowling Center.
Registration has opened for softball, but not yet for golf nor bowling.
“We opened registration for softball last Wednesday, and I have nine teams already,” said Tudor, who is also the men’s softball event director. “We’re going to open (the golf) registration probably the beginning of September. In the meantime, we’ll get some flyers out, and we’ll get the information on our Facebook page and on the website.
“We’ll open the bowling registration, probably in October. Bowling fills up really quickly. It’s our typical nine-pin, no-tap Christmas bowling. We’ve never had a problem filling that one, but we want to make sure we give people time to register for it.”
Like the softball tournaments in the past for both the men’s and the women’s, the upcoming men’s softball tournament is a tune up for the Huntsman World Senior Games. So, it is a two-for-one opportunity for the teams to compete in this tournament as preparation, while getting the local players to play as well.
In addition to preparing for the fall games in this downtime, the Mesquite Senior Games are also beginning to plan for next year’s spring season.
In terms of getting situated now ahead of next March, which is still eight months away, the initial steps have been taken.
“We’re looking at all of our venues and getting everything organized for next spring season,” Tudor said. “We’ve got to go through, and we’ve got to meet with all of the various venues and make sure that they’re still available and what time frame is going to work for them.”
Those early decisions not only come from when the venues are available, but also from the Mesquite Senior Games perspective as to when they can logistically hold an event, including from the after action reports from each event, from the respective event director.
“We looked at some of the games that we had this past spring and went, ‘Oh, why did we do that? Or, why did we have three different events on like four different days,’” Tudor said. “So, we’re trying to spread it out a little more so that we’re not overloading ourselves and yet, we still get all our games in in the time frame that we need to, both before it gets too hot, and before we lose our snowbirds.”
That is all part of the to-do list right now for the Mesquite Senior Games as they look to get ahead rather than work from behind and time comes sooner than they think.
