Donna And The Value Of Play As A Kid

Ray Glier

For some people, theirs is not a quest for the ultimate—aging well—it is a quest for something else—a lifespan that is unreasonable.

I sometimes wonder if those searching for immortality in the hype machine known as “Longevity” do not grasp a fundamental of cheating death. Play.

They should consult Donna Quaife, 81, who is still playing pickleball competitively. She understands the uncomplicated value of play.

I asked Donna how she has been able to play pickleball into her 80s. She does not own a hyperbaric chamber, or have a $20,000 gym membership, just a treadmill and a three-story house in Castle Rock, WA. Those are simple bio-hacks, as in this article free to read.

What I got back from her was unambiguous about aging well. It is her manifesto.

“I started playing sports before Title IX, okay, and I had two older brothers who were sports addicted, a whole neighborhood that was sports addicted, so I've been playing sports since I was four or five years old,” Donna said. “We had a shot put pit in the backyard. We had a high jump in the backyard. We had a basketball hoop in my driveway.”

Lean into her story Geezer Jocks and find your own story in Quaife’s. Were you that active as a kid? I bet you were. Maybe it was kick-the-can, or dodgeball, but you have some substructure, an underpinning, to take advantage of. Donna is not uncommon among us.

“I got my first broken nose when I was in the eighth grade with my brother elbowing me in basketball," she said. "I played everything in city leagues my whole life. I played soccer at 70. I played softball at 70. I still play a little softball.”

Donna had her two knees replaced at 62. She is physically fit and a hand-full for opponents on the pickleball court. Quaife has won gold at the National Senior Games. She won a bronze medal in the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships April 11-18.

Imagine yourself at 81 doing this: Donna played 17 matches in singles and doubles at The Open. It was 85 to 89 degrees over the six days she played in Naples, Fla.

“It’s not that many matches for that many days,” she scoffed.

Again, Quaife’s enchantment with being an active sportswoman shows through. It’s never a thing of necessity, just joy. And it is not just genes, as the article above explains.

Donna still keeps everything oiled. She uses the treadmill five or six days a week for an hour a pop. The speed is set to 3.5 miles per hour, the incline to 4. And then there are the steps to go up and down in that three-story house.

Quaife was an infection preventionist for hospitals in the Northwest, which tracks with her joyful age-prevention work these days. She loved the job, but retired before 70 because insurance companies insisted on squeezing multiple people with different infections into the same room to save a buck.

One thing she won’t surrender to is being intimidated by a challenge. Her grandson was a nationally-ranked 5.0 pickleball player. Donna hits the ball back and forth with him and is amazed how this highly-skilled player never hits a ball with more than 80 percent of his power.

“Placement over power,” Quaife said. “You get more cerebral as you age.”

It also helps to start early physically. My guess is that many Geezer Jocks under-estimate the value of the “playing” they did as kids. Don’t.

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