By: Breven Honda
The Mesquite Senior Games concluded last month as hundreds of people participated throughout the 17-event schedule. 
Overall, there were more than 450 individual registrations. In regard to total registrations, for those that participated in multiple events, that number reached more than 900 participants.
“I think we had a really good year,” Mesquite Senior Games President Sandy Tudor said on April 28. “We had some challenges with a couple venues, and I think we’ve pretty much worked those out, or hope to, for next year.”
One of the biggest obstacles Tudor and the MSG faced came in the final event of the season with the Tennis Senior Challenge.
Originally scheduled to take place from April 21-25, there were not enough registered participants. So, the tennis events had to be canceled.
“You can’t make everybody happy all the time. I mean, let’s face it,” Tudor said. “Some people weren’t happy with the format on tennis. So, we’re going to figure out how to do that better and get tennis going next year.”
Whether an event is successful, or not, the Mesquite Senior Games has an “After Action Report,” which allows event directors to report the things that went right and wrong and what to do in the future.
“We each do what’s called an after action report on an event, and put down what worked well, what the challenges were, what we need to do better next time,” Tudor said. “So, we’ll go over all of those at our next board meeting. We’ll come up with a plan of action for next year so that we don’t have the same issues.”
Although the Tennis Senior Challenges had some issues, there were a lot more events that were on the successful end.
The yearly track and field is always a signature event every spring at Virgin Valley High School.
Although there was no javelin event, track and field was still able to produce a great day of competition and fun as many athletes participated in multiple events.
Julie Badawi, who competed in the 60-64 age range and from Mesquite, earned the gold medal in the women 50-meter run and 100-meter run. She earned a third gold medal in the women’s softball throw in her age group, reaching 92 feet, five inches.
Another Mesquite local had success on the track. Shelton Wakefield, who competed in the 85-89 age range, collected two gold medals in the men’s 200-meter run and the 400-meter powerwalk.
Not only do the participants compete, but the Virgin Valley High School track and field took a break from their in-season work to be involved giving back to seniors.
“Track is always a good event,” Tudor said. (The high school track and field athletes) are invaluable. They do things like run with the athletes. If somebody is bringing up the rear, they’ll go out and run with them to encourage them. Then they help us set everything up and tear everything down. In return, we feed them and give them a t-shirt. There were quite a few of them there.”
One week after track and field, the month of April was kicked off by the shotgun sports and target pistol events.
Despite the shooting events taking place at the range in Hurricane, Utah, event director Jim Armstrong put together a successful event as Tudor and the board will look for a site closer to Mesquite.
“Target pistol was pretty good. We had 48 shooters in target pistol, and we had another 32 in shotgun. So, the gun events went well. We’re hoping to find a local venue for at least the target pistol for next year.”
One day after the shooting events came the women’s softball events on April 5-6 and 8-9, based on age brackets.
There were 30 total teams that competed on the diamond with most also putting themselves into a position for an upcoming national tournament.
“It went really well,” said Tudor, who is the women’s softball event director. “A lot of these women are getting ready to go to nationals in Des Moines, Iowa this summer. So, everybody’s practicing and playing in as many tournaments as they can.”
The Mesquite Senior Games will also be a qualifier for next year’s softball events in 11 months.
To round out the spring season, cornhole and bocce took center stage. Teams Corn Stars 2 of Davis and Gary Graybill took home the gold medal with eight team wins, while allowing just 14 opponent points.
“Cornhole was great. We had it at the Eureka (Casino Resort) parking lot again, which is where we actually ran a tournament for the Eureka last year for Veterans Day,” Tudor said. “We talked to them about using their venue again.
“The weather was perfect. They had a DJ there, so we had music. They had a beer and wine bar there. They served muffins and coffee in the morning, and we had nine cornhole teams. So that worked out really well.”
Like cornhole, bocce also went well as Team Chuckers of Chuck Werner, Gary Werner, George Brack and Greg Cross took the gold medal in the 4-person bocce event, logging eight total team wins with a plus 32-point differential.
In the two-person event, John Maystadt and Kenneth Hoover, named The Chiefs, won 10 matches, with a plus 69-point differential to take the gold medal.
“Well, I ended up playing in the in the two-person because we had a cancelation,” Tudor said. “It’s a lot of fun. I actually played it a couple years ago. Sometimes I wonder why they play in our tournament when they play each other all the time because it’s at Sun City, and it’s on their courts, and it’s Sun City teams that play each other all the time, but they have a good Time. It’s a fun event where, yes, there’s competition, but everybody’s really motivated to help other people.”
April also brought the second fitness hike.
There will be some changes next year to the fitness as event direct Clint Bostwick is moving to Florida, opening up the event director role, if not taken by a board member.
“I talked to him the other day, he’s going to take me on the hike, so I know kind of what’s going on, and we’ll see how we’re going to do this next year, but he won’t be around to do it for us,” Tudor said.
Throughout all of the games, Tudor said the involvement from both the volunteers and the event directors and any other help that goes into putting on each event.
“We couldn’t do anything without them, and the hardest thing in the world is to get and keep good volunteers,” Tudor said. “Event directors) were awesome. Marge (Mongolo) did at least two events. Krista (Kilpatrick) did an event. (Sports Director Shawn Edwards) coordinated with all of the events. It’s a thankless job in a lot of ways. You’re the one that hears all the complaints and sometimes none of the compliments, but the event directors do a great job.
“We had two new event directors this year who did Pickleball for us. They actually are part of the Sun City pickleball group, and they ran our pickleball tournament and did a phenomenal job. We didn’t have any complaints about Pickleball this year.”
Now going into the summer, work remains on going as preparations will eventually begin for the fall season.
Tudor also said that after their board meeting, they will already get a start for next year’s spring season.
“The first thing we’re going to do is figure out what events we’re going to have in the fall, and then we’re going to start right now with getting things going for next spring,” Tudor said. “There were a lot of things going on this year, before the game started. We changed our website; we did some of that stuff. So, we kind of got a little bit of a late start on some of this.
“Probably in the next month, we’re going to make sure we have all of our venues and everything we need.”
