Looking For 'Game' At 100. Why not?

"I'm going to beat the devil out of you," Diane Friedman (pictured) said to a rival. Is this trash talk healthy for Masters athletes? Some say yes. Photo by Growing Bolder.

(This story from the Geezer Jock archives illustrates why competitive zeal is ok for older athletes. Diane Friedman vs. Julia Hawkins, both over 100 years old).

By Ray Glier

“In Life, unlike Chess, the game continues after checkmate.” Issac Asimov, American writer and scientist.

Diane Friedman, 100, saw Julia Hawkins face pop up on the Zoom screen and there was a burst of wonderment from Friedman, as if a spaceship had landed in her back yard. 

Friedman leaned forward in her chair and was practically breathless. 

“Hi! Nice to see you. Nice to meet you. How ya doin?” she called out to Hawkins, who is 105 years old. 

Diane’s eyes were as wide as a satellite dish. It was a robust, my-God-am-I-glad-to-see-somebody-like-me, greeting. 

Friedman was being interviewed by Marc Middleton, whose multimedia company is Growing Bolder, a lifestyle brand for people who are older. She set two world records August 15 in the 100-meter dash and the 200-meter dash at the Michigan Senior Olympics in the 100-104 age group. 

Del Moon, the media director for the National Senior Games Association, was on the call and brought in the Louisiana Masters runner Hawkins via Zoom. 

It was Hawkins’ world record in the 100 that Julia had broken. Hawkins is still competing. 
“The two of us should meet together and run together,” Diane said. 

“I’d like it,” Julia said. 

“I’m going to beat the devil out of you,” Friedman said before bursting out in a laugh. 

Hawkins didn’t flinch at the throw-down. Her brand of competitiveness is more reserved. 

“There is something about just wanting to win that gets inside your blood,” she said of her own mindset. “You want to be ahead.” 

Friedman was sitting next to her coach, Bruce Sherman. Hawkins felt compelled to take a dig at her new sort-of rival, at least it sounded like a slight dig. 

“One thing about her and me, I’ve never had a coach, and I’ve never been trained,” Hawkins said. “I just get out there and run.” 

(Hawkins, 105, competed in the Louisiana Senior Games on November 6th, 2021. She became the oldest female in history to compete in a sanctioned track & field event, when she ran the 100-meter-dash in 1 minute and 3 seconds.)

Julia passed October 22, 2024. 

** 

I’m not trying to sell this story to the circus. It’s just fun. It’s showing what’s possible. That’s all. 

This is not two women, each past 100 years old, capitulating to age. This is two women having their competitive juices percolate to the top. 

They have out-lasted our culture’s checkmate. 

This is the whole point of Geezer Jock, which is to give the rest of us a higher limb to climb to, or some inspiration. 

Friedman has no bedside manner when her friends marvel over her running and insist they could never do what she does.

“I just get so tired” is the reason they give as to why they don’t walk, Friedman said.

She does not have a parabolic, soothing response. She just retorts, “Well, get tired then.” 

Friedman is not going to bend that limb down for them to grab. They have to reach. 

Hawkins, meanwhile, said she was a cyclist then quit because there were no more cyclists in her age class. She took up running in a search for competition. She exhausted those rivals, as well. It ended up being Hawkins vs. Hawkins and that was ok, too. 

“I thought if I could do 100 (meters) in under a minute it would be wonderful,” Hawkins said. “And for me it was wonderful.” 

She ran the 100 in 39 seconds. And then Friedman came along and went three seconds better without a competitor to push her. 

Sherman, whose Ph.D. is in exercise physiology, can be heard on the video of the 100 in Michigan shouting, “Faster, Diane, faster.” The exhortations, which come with Diane’s blessing, are “rocket fuel” because there is no competitor to drive her down the track. 

Competition, Sherman insists, is healthy, even among Geezer Jocks. 

“Competitiveness by older athletes of any age can be of great value, whether it’s pursued versus other competitors, the clock, or the tape measure,” he said. “Achieving the ‘goal’ of the competitiveness, whether it be a victory, a record, or both, can serve as a booster shot of self-satisfaction and self-achievement that can be a far-reaching benefit both emotionally and physically—potentially a fountain-of-youth moment—that the athlete can carry forward into other athletic endeavors and life.” 

Journalist Ken Stone, who has covered Masters Track since 1996, said he asked the late Bert Morrow, a hurdler, why he was thinking of retiring. 

“He said it was because he had nobody in his age group left to compete against,” Stone said. “The older we get, the more we treasure our rivals. They give us reason to train and strain.” 

What’s going on here is bigger than a thumbnail on aging athletes. Friedman vs. Hawkins, 100 vs. 105, is rare now, but it won’t be in 20 years. There is going to be a raft of Centenarians who are fit and they are going to be looking for game. Scientists are certain of it. 

And with these 100-year olds will come rivalries, like Hawkins vs. Friedman. Will it stay cordial? If some entrepreneur sees a way to monetize it, maybe not. Perhaps the maturity of the athletes, or their sensibility, will prevail and keep it sane. 

So when Diane Friedman tells Julia Hawkins on a Zoom call she is going “to beat the Devil” out of her, I will take that as a plea for competition, not smack talk. Diane is begging for Julia’s competition and the benefits that come with it.

We should all be thankful for that runner in the next lane.