Valley seniors bring home gold

WASILLA — Sitting in the library at the Wasilla Area Seniors facility last Thursday, friends stop by periodically to congratulate Jane Soeten on the seven gold medals she brought back from the Alaska International Senior Games in Fairbanks.

“Not bad for an old woman,” she jokes with one.

“Are you coming with me to Fairbanks next year?” she asks another.

Mat-Su sent five people to the games this year, though not all competed against one another as the games are divided up into groups by age. Diann Darnell, President of Alaska International Senior Games, read off the results when reached by phone Monday:

•Soeten won gold in javelin, shot put, long jump, standing jump, basketball and bocce and silver in racquetball.

•Robert Frost of Palmer took home silver in the 200-meter dash and bronze in the standing long jump

• John Miller of Wasilla won gold with his partner Douglas Haralson in the racquetball event

• Jeff Keuler of Wasilla also played doubles racquetball but in a different age group. He and his partner, Charles Pannone, won gold as well. Keuler also compete din the singles event and won a second gold.

• Vince Mee of Wasilla played golf at the games, taking home a silver after he shot a combined 265 over three rounds of 18 holes. He just barely missed the gold, coming in just four strokes under the leader.

Darnell said that she was very glad to see so much participation from Mat-Su, all of whom, she said, qualified to go to the nationals for the International Senior Games in Minneapolis, Minnesota next July.

“We’re really proud of all the athletes,” she said.

At the senior center last week, Soeten pointed to each of her seven medals as she said what it was for. The silver she stuffed in her pocket when it came time to get her picture taken rather than drape it over her neck like she did with her gold medals.

“She just whipped me good,” she said of her racquetball competitor, who she later faced in the bocce event. “When it came to bocce — and I hadn’t ever played it before — I whipped her good.”

She said she played bocce with a bit of strategy, capitalizing on her competitors’ lack of arm strength to put the white target ball further out where she’d have an easier time reaching it than they would.

In senior games, Soeten said, bocce and pickle ball are the big ones. The Fairbanks games had eight bocce courts set up. Relatively recently, four pickle ball courts — a kind of wiffle-ball tennis played in a space about the size of a half-court basketball court — were built in that northern city.

“It is really a fun game, a lot of strategy in that,” Soeten said.

Though she’s a relatively recent arrival in Alaska, Soeten is an inveterate Senior Games competitor. She participated at the national level every year since 1988. Her three-on-three basketball team won national championships enough times that she was on the Rosie O’Donnell Show, proof of which is available on YouTube.

“Our little three team were known to be rough. We were not rough,” Soeten said, before WASI director Ingrid Ling interrupts to give her some gentle ribbing.

“You’ll see on the Rosie O’Donnell show she shows you how to do a body check,” Ling says with a laugh.

Darnell seemed excited to have some basketball expertise on hand, seeing as how the Alaska games was able to field three women’s teams and hold a basketball event for the first time in its 12-year history.

“She was our oldest competitor in basketball. It was the very first time we had it and she did extremely well it was a lot of fun,” Darnell said.

She noted that Soeten had to “play down” — competing in the bracket for people 55-59 years old despite being over 80 herself.

To help Soeten get to Fairbanks, Ling set up a gofundme.com account to crowd-source donations. Money came in from WASI staff and from Sen. Mike Dunleavy. Soeten gets a little teary-eyed thinking about a 97-year-old friend who gave her $25.

“I’m going to give her a medal,” she said.

Winning in Fairbanks, Soeten said, wasn’t as hard as winning at nationals. She said that for nationals she’s going to go into training.

“I’m starting now, I will start getting in condition to go to nationals because you bring in all those little Wisconsin gals, built like little Sherman tanks, you should see them do a shot put,” Soeten said.

She hopes more Valley residents will participate in the games. She thinks activity is essential for seniors. She said it’s a great way to get to meet new people. Socializing is good for everyone, not just seniors.

“It really makes a lot of difference, because the more they sit and don’t get active, they really do deteriorate. Their muscles, they can’t walk and all sorts of other things,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.