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A 92-year-old woman swings a white controller toward a flat-screen television, hung 15 feet away on a wall.
Marry Berry of Stillwater watches as an animated girl in a pink skirt rolls a bowling ball down an alley into a set of pins.
“Now, would you look at that curve?” Berry said. “Well that’s not the curve I wanted.”
As she sits, another woman stands to sling the imaginary bowling ball at the high-definition TV.
These seniors are bowling on the Wii, Nintendo’s newest video game system. At the Stillwater Senior Citizens Center, the Wii can be played anytime the center is open and any senior 55 or older can play for free.
Stillwater Administrative Technician Teresa Self said the center got the Wii in January with four controllers and several sports and fitness games. Each Wii Remote can “mimic the actions of swinging a racket, bat or club, roll a ball down an alley or bring the left jab,” according to Nintendo’s Web site.
Self said the staff at the center decided to get a Wii because similar centers are using it.
“We saw some of them doing it on TV,” she said. “Across the country in other states, they were having bowling tournaments. We thought that looked fun.”
After exercise class every Tuesday morning, Berry and other seniors gather for a few rounds of bowling. On Thursdays, they have digitally guided workouts on the Wii Fit, a virtual exercise program, which uses the Wii Balance Board to test fitness.
“Bowling was one of the sports I thought I could do,” Berry said. “But I had to learn a lot about how to do it on the Wii system.”
As a child, Berry played basketball with her brothers, skipped rope and made up her own games.
During the Great Depression and World War II, Berry lived and worked on a farm with her husband.
“We lived on a farm, and I was strong,” Berry said. “I handled 100-pound bags of feed.”
Berry has been bowling since her youth and continues to bowl in a league at Frontier Lanes. For Berry, the biggest difference between real bowling and bowling on the Wii is the lack of an actual bowling ball.
“When I was in the prime of my life … I would run up to the line, come up there with all my force,” Berry said. “I used to could use my whole body and all my strength. But that has changed.”
Some seniors have had no trouble playing with the new technology.
“I think it’s a blast, I love it,” said Louella Harshman, 67, of Stillwater. “I have even bowled in a chair.”
Harshman currently leads the Tuesday exercise class at the center. She said she learned to play the Wii quickly.
She stands to instruct a first-time player how to use the controller to bowl.
“It’s just something to forget your worries and forget that you’re old,” Harshman said. “I live 10 miles out in the country out on a farm, and this is just something to get away.”
As for Berry, she is glad to be able to bowl, whether on a league or on the Wii.
“I’m older, slower and rounder, but the Lord has blessed me and I’m thankful for that.”
my grandparents live in Cleveland to.
glad you enjoyed my story.
-JS