San Diego seniors find Wii bowling is up their alley

It’s Bettie Lu Thorn’s turn to bowl, and a lot is at stake. Her team is in third place in their conference, and there are only two games left in the season. She regularly bowls over 200, and the pressure is on for her to hit one of her highest scores.

She rises from her seat, takes her place in front of the pins and steadies her Nintendo Wii video game remote. Keeping her eyes on the TV screen in front of her, she raises the hand holding the remote behind her and then swings it forward while releasing one of the remote’s buttons. Her motion is fluid and her form is steady, but the bowling ball shown on the TV screen only knocks over eight of the 10 pins.

“Jeepers!” cries one of her teammates. “You were robbed!”

This is not your typical night at the bowling alley. Instead, the action is taking place on a Wii bowling game held in one of the sitting rooms at St. Paul’s Manor, a retirement community in Banker’s Hill. Thorn’s five teammates on “The Paulettes” (named for St. Paul’s Manor) are all over the age of 70, but that doesn’t stop them from throwing their best balls in an attempt to beat the Las Colinas Cougars, a team from New Mexico that The Paulettes are playing remotely.

The Paulettes are part of the National Senior League, an organization of over 800 senior citizens on 144 teams who battle it out on the Wii bowling lanes. After last year’s “trial run” of the league, this is the first official year of competition, said Jeff Nystrom, the league’s commissioner.

Also see: A Wii bit of blind luck

Although St. Paul’s Manor has offered Wii bowling as an activity since last year, joining the league has brought the game to another level, said Marina Hernandez, the activity director at St. Paul’s Manor. The Paulettes now have regular practices, team shirts, and fans from the retirement home who follow their scores online and even come to watch their games.

“There is now a team unity and a competitive spirit that really brightens their day,” Hernandez said. “They have a sense of accomplishment because they’re able to win, and it also allows them to get exercise.”

Photo by Claire Trageser

In addition to the team camaraderie, the exercise element of the Wii games can have a significant effect on the moods of elderly players, said Ipsit Vahia, a postdoc fellow at UC San Diego. Vahia worked as one of the lead investigators on a recently released study that suggested that regular use of exercise video games among elderly patients improved symptoms of depression.

“The beneficial effects of exercise on mood have been well documented in the literature, however, older adults are less likely to perform exercise, or sustain exercise,” Vahia said.

Exercise video games make sports easier to play and more engaging, which means seniors are more likely to play them, Vahia said.

The study, which was led by Dr. Dilip Jeste, a professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at UCSD’s School of Medicine, asked 19 participants between 63 and 94 years old to play an exercise game on the Wii for three 35-minute sessions a week. By the end of the study, more than a third of the participants had seen their depressive symptoms decrease by 50 percent or more.

A similar depression reduction would also be likely if the participants were playing real sports, but exercise video games are easier to access and are generally safer, Vahia said.

This was true for “The Bowling Stones,” an eight-person team from the Wesley Palms retirement community in Pacific Beach.

“It’s a good way to cure the ‘used tos,’ meaning, ‘I used to bowl,’” said Daniel Pixley, the assistant activities director at Wesley Palms. “It’s a way people can bowl again when they can’t drive to the bowling alley or hold heavy bowling balls any more. Now they are still be able to bowl, so they get that exercise and entertainment.”

The women on The Paulettes agree.

“I used to love to bowl years ago, but the ball is too heavy,” said Georgeanne Smith, who bowled on a team for the 3M Corporation in St. Paul before moving to California in 1958. “This is so much easier and is much more fun.”

Another Paulette, Ginnie Sambo, added that the team once visited a local bowling alley, but couldn’t lift the balls.

All of the women agreed that the switch to Wii bowling was an easy adjustment. Although she didn’t know what Wii was before joining the team, Bettie Lu Thorn—the team’s best player, according to Sambo—now has her technique perfected.

“I hold my hand very stiff and over to the right,” she said. “I also use duct tape to mark my spot on the floor.”

During the game on Friday, Thorn had her chance to employ her plan of attack. After knocking down eight pins, she lined up again in hopes of bowling a spare. Using the Wii remote, she positioned her grey-haired and bespectacled “Mii”—the animated character designed to look like her—in front of the bowling lane.

“Move to the right,” her teammates shouted from their seats.

Thorn took aim, swung her arm and released the virtual bowling ball. It rolled down the lane and blasted the two remaining pins.

Her teammates erupted into cheers and Thorn pumped her fist in the air, then turned and took her seat with a triumphant smile.

By the end of the game, the benefits of Wii bowling seem clear. But The Paulettes are in it for more than the exercise and fun of the game. They want to win.

“There are still a few games left,” Sambo said. “Do we have a shot to win? Absolutely!”

Claire Trageser is an SDNN contributing writer.

Tags: community, Controller, depression, game, nintendo, remote, retirement home, SDNN, senior bowling, TV, videogame, Wii bowling

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