Inaugural Senior Olympics is Wednesday in Bayou Vista

The inaugural St. Mary Parish Senior Olympics will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday at Bayou Vista Community Center.

Residents from nursing homes and assisted living facilities will participate in the Senior Olympics. Entities involved are Patterson Healthcare Center, Morgan City Health Care Center, Maison Jardin Senior Living Community, Franklin Health Care & Rehabilitation Center and St. Mary Council on Aging.

Senior citizens from the local senior centers will also participate. Family and friends of participating seniors are welcome to attend.
Activities include wheelchair races, beanbag baseball, cornhole, bowling, an indoor fishing game and ladder ball.

Alexis McIntyre, director of business development and social services at Patterson Healthcare, came up with the idea about a month ago to hold the St. Mary Parish Senior Olympics, in part, as a way to celebrate National Senior Fitness Day.

For the past year and a half, McIntyre had been working with Council on Aging groups and leading exercise classes to get seniors to stretch and move.

“I really enjoy doing that, and they really enjoy it,” McIntyre said.

She decided one day to ask administrators with other senior facilities if they’d be interested in holding a Senior Olympics event with “friendly competition” and a goal of getting seniors more active. They liked the idea, and organizers started planning the event.

“Sometimes they (seniors) don’t move like they should, or they don’t have people to get them moving or motivated to do something,” McIntyre said.

The Senior Olympics will also allow seniors to socialize with other people who they don’t normally see.

“We’re hoping to make it an annual event,” said Shawn Verdin, director of marketing at Morgan City Health Care.