When Pen Track’s Sandy Anderson attended her first B.C. Seniors Games about 10 years ago, she was delighted to come home with the gold medal -— in Women’s Snooker.
After winning that competition, she went to watch the track and field events, and said to herself, “That looks like fun.” On her return, she turned up at the Parkland track to join the Saturday Morning Ladies Club, as the group of Pen Track senior athletes joking called themselves, and traded in her billiards cue for a javelin.
At the recent BC Senior Games in Trail, she continued her tradition of winning gold field event medals, which have included many at the international level, by taking the W70 pole vault with a new Canadian record of 1.55m, and the shot put with a throw of 8.41m, just one centimetre shy of the BC record. She also captured silver medals in the javelin (16.58m), discus (15.74m) and weight throw (7.87m).
Joining her at the top of the podium were Pen Trackers Les East and Peggy Morfitt.
East, competing in the M70 class, won four gold medals, out-leaping his rivals in the high jump with 1.24m and in the triple jump, clearing 8.15m. He also showed his excellent throwing abilities with a winning heave of 30.78m in the hammer event and by capturing the discus throw with a toss of 31.34m. To this haul, he added a silver medal in the long jump, where he recorded a distance of 3.43m.
Morfitt was delighted to receive gold for her winning throw of 16.20m in the W70 hammer throw competition. To this she added a bronze medallion in the weight throw event (6.31m) and a further, though unexpected, bronze as part of the Zone 1, 4x100m mixed relay event. She came a few centimeters short of bronze in both of her discus and javelin events.
While these Games signal the last competition of this year for these masters and seniors athletes, they are already preparing for the coming winter training sessions, and further successes in 2012.
