Two Westlock-area athletes returned home from the Canada 55-Plus Summer Games in Strathcona County on Aug. 27-30 with medals around their necks.
Alan Watt won gold in the men’s 80-plus low gross golf event, while Vivian Oko won bronze in the women’s 65-plus pickleball event with partner Dorothy Downie from Gibbons.
In total, the area sent seven athletes to the Games.
Watt’s gold-medal performance was fairly convincing, as he posted a two-round score of 175, a full 25 strokes ahead of the second-place competitor.
“It was better than to be an also-ran, I suppose,” he said about winning the tournament. “It was good fun.”
While Watts may have won the event, he said he didn’t go to compete, necessarily.
“I think the Canada Games are mainly about participaction rather than winning,” he said. “It’s to go there and enjoy the atmosphere and have some fun with the competitors from around the country.”
In order to participate in the games, he said athletes typically have to qualify, often through their own provinces’ games.
However, in Watt’s case, he ended up competing because the organizers called him up and invited him, ostensibly because there were no Alberta athletes in the men’s 80-plus golf division.
For Vivian Oko and her partner Dorothy Downie, winning bronze in pickleball was both rewarding and disappointing, but overall it was a good experience.
“We had a very good time,” Oko said.
Teams were ranked by the total points they scored during the tournament. Oko and Downie finished tied for second place with 86 points, but ended up in third when points against were factored in.
Then again, Oko said the fact she and Downie won a medal at all was somewhat surprising because they are not a regular team — they teamed up because Oko’s regular partner was sidelined with an injury.
Playing at the Games was a different experience than playing in Westlock, Oko said. Besides there being fairly large crowds watching the matches, the players also had to account for the playing conditions — outdoors with the wind wreaking havoc on the ball’s flight.
Yet while the Games were an athletic competition, there was a lot of free time to mingle with the other athletes.
“A great part of the Games is the socializing and meeting new people from other places,” Oko said.
The remaining five area athletes had mixed results.
Debbie Shoemaker had the best non-medal performance, taking fifth place in the women’s 55-plus low net golf event. Her score of 147 was only nine shots back of the winning score of 138.
Marlene Fizer finished in 13th place in the same event with a score of 157.
Richard Hadley also took to the links, finishing in 27th place in the men’s 55-plus Callaway event.
Around the card table, the team of Marie Byrd and Richard Nadeau claimed 16th place in the cribbage competition with 5,266 points.
