225BatonRouge.com

We love to play.

That’s why we put up with aching muscles. Icing our joints. Popping anti-inflammatories like candy.

“This is how I’ve been all my life: I just enjoy playing for the spirit of playing,” says Helene Afeman, a 46-year-old instructor in LSU’s Department of Kinesiology. “I don’t get upset when I lose, and I don’t get overly thrilled and trash talk when I win. I just love to play.”

The former Episcopal and LSU tennis standout still plays tennis, became an avid golfer as an adult and then became a soccer player at 30.

“If I can have a three-sport day,” she says, “that is heaven for me. A perfect day.”

Most of us older-adult athletes are pleased to play just once a day. There comes a point when it’s no longer about who wins or loses. You compete against yourself, in essence, thrilled to have the opportunity.

Me? I tell people I was one heck of a water polo player in my day. But this is no longer my day. Yet, at 55, I still make the trek to New Orleans a few days a week to practice, scrimmage and occasionally compete with the Tulane club team. I’m glad no one sees me getting out of the car after the late-night drive back. Truly, I look like an old man in pain trying to take that first step.

But it hurts so good. And it gets better the next day.

Baton Rouge offers dozens of competitive team sports for adults, from softball and volleyball to swimming and running. (Check out our list of popular adult leagues here).

Baton Rouge lawyer Hansel Harlan, 44, makes the ride with me. He’s a goalie, which might make him crazier than most polo players.

“The feeling that I notice the most when I play is the morning after and my body feels totally washed-out, but in a good way, like after a really hard workout,” Harlan says.

Oh, we get a workout. We swim. We tread water. We sprint and engage essentially in hand-to-hand combat, all in more than eight feet of water against kids way younger than us.

And we get to be on a team, which is special in itself.

Yeah, a lot of sports in which older athletes participate and compete are outside the mainstream.

Like pickleball, which is big in Baton Rouge. But more on that later.

Or kickball.

Red Stick Area Kickball boasts fierce competition in the game you played in grade school, but it also takes camaraderie to a different level. Scott Murry, the founder and commissioner, is proud to tell you that since 2005 there have been six couples who have met while playing kickball and then married.

The latest kickball couple is Amanda and Jake Hendrix. Jake, who is 30, moved here from Georgia in January 2006. Amanda, 26, moved here from Houston about a year later.

Each of them joined the kickball league as a way to meet people. They were on opposing teams but hit it off on the diamond; they were married last October.

“All the money that’s spent on things like Match.com,” Murry cracks. “All you have to do is come out and play kickball.”

So add romance to the adult-sports attraction.

But that wasn’t the hook for Ken Blanchard.

“I feel good when my wife brags about me,” he says. And well he should. Blanchard, 80 years young, took up running in his 60s. Last year in the National Senior Games in Stanford, Calif., Blanchard won gold medals in the 1,500- and 800-meter runs and a silver in the 10K in the 80 to 84 division.

Blanchard ran cross-country in high school, but for the next 40 years or so played only some tennis. Then, about 20 years ago while working at Jacobs Engineering, he competed in the Corporate Cup. “There I got to know the Club South Runners group and started running in the weekend races.”

Now he runs about 15 miles a week, which includes some speed work, he says. Like any runner, he has nagging pains—most recently in his ankles—but fights through them.

“Here locally it’s mostly for the participation,” he says. “I run with the Varsity Sports group. It’s a nice group, and we have social events. Nationally I’m competitive in my age group, so I train for the Senior Olympics.”

While Blanchard took up his sport at 60, John Schultz has been playing his for longer than that. The oldest soccer player in Baton Rouge is 71 and still plays in three leagues, including men’s 30-and-over and coed over-30.

And I thought I was special mixing it up in the pool with 20-somethings.

Schultz is a native of Berlin, where he started playing soccer at age 6. His father served in the German army, and they moved to the United States in 1951. Schultz moved to Baton Rouge in 1968. His acquiescence to age? Moving from offense to defense on the soccer pitch.

“I still run pretty fast. I’m in pretty good shape,” says Schultz, who retired from the U.S. Army and later taught electronic communications at LSU.

But playing soccer with 30-year-olds?

I told him he was nuts.

He laughed and got right to the point.

“We do a lot of consumption of adult beverages after each game,” he said. “I think that helps.”

But that’s after the game. During it, how does a man his age keep from getting hurt in a contact sport that can get pretty vicious at times? Hah, he says. His brother, who lives in San Diego, still plays at 77.

“What you learn after you play a number of years is if you get hit, you roll better. When they hit you and they’re bigger than you, roll backwards, and you don’t get hurt. The most severe injury was about three weeks ago when I pulled a hamstring, but it’s getting better.”

You just don’t heal like you used to when you’re 71.

“As long as you had a good time and played your best,” Schultz says, “then you maximized your potential.”

At least he can avoid a collision. J.R. Vendetto is a 48-year-old who plays rugby. Rugby is all about banging into other people. They have bumper stickers that say things like “Rugby Players Eat Their Dead” and “Give Blood, Play Rugby.”

I thought we were cute with “It Takes Balls to Play Water Polo.”

In water polo, the injuries are pretty limited. There are pulled groins and sore knees from the “eggbeater” kick we do to stay atop the water. Sore shoulders. An occasional scratch or poke in the eye.

We don’t sprain ankles or blow out knees. That’s why guys like Bill Stracener, who plays basketball a few nights a week, are amazing. He’s 81 and plays 3-on-3 in regional and national competitions. “In 3-on-3 there’s no place to hide,” Stracener points out.

All this sporting activity going on is not limited to old folks, of course. Just about every sport you can imagine exists in our area, from all the so-called mainstream sports to Australian rules football, cricket, ice hockey, women’s roller derby and oh yeah, pickleball.

Pickleball is a game played on a badminton court with a three-foot-high net. The competitors use paddles about the size of racquetball racquets to hit a baseball-sized wiffleball. The primary concept is tennis with many rule variations. It’s big in some area high schools and really big in other parts of the country.

On a recent night, I limped into the house after the drive back from water polo. My wife, Brenda LeBlanc, a competitive pickleball player, was icing both knees.

Hurts so good.

“The sacrifice at our age is to be expected,” says LeBlanc, 49. “On a long tournament day, your body can take a beating, which is why a number of players elect not to play in tournaments.”

She, like so many weekend warriors, would never skip a tournament if she didn’t have to.

“It helps to satisfy my competitive desires, playing a game where the score is kept and placing the shots and outwitting your opponent. It helps to satisfy some of that.”

Whatever works.

Competition. Camaraderie. Exercise. Adult beverages. We just love to play.

“I didn’t know anything about soccer when I started,” says Afeman, the three-sports-a-day warrior. “I just knew that I liked to chase balls on playing fields. I knew I could do that all day, any day. And I get addicted to the fitness part.”

And she doesn’t even have to tread water to do it.

Click here to read ways to minimize injuries.