Rocky Jackson has always enjoyed staying active. He was an employment labor attorney for 43 years, and at age 19, he was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 1969 out of Yakima Valley Community College, which he jokes makes him the oldest living holdout of the team now called the Cleveland Guardians. He spent his college years playing against future MLB greats, collecting enough road-trip stories to fill a book.

Since age 35, Rocky has played tennis on and off, and now in retirement, he is on the courts several times a week, even playing singles for the sheer joy of long rallies and movement. Rocky is an avid golfer who has played around the world with his wife, braving everything from beach courses to 105-degree summers. He strongly believes in cross-training workouts and is adding lap swimming into the mix. After double hip replacements in 2020, Rocky came back stronger, and at 75, he’s still playing singles tennis and living by the beliefs that “The universe always says yes” and “You have to use it or lose it.”

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Vera Koo is a first-generation Chinese American woman whose life reads like an adventure in courage and reinvention. She is a 79-year-old wife, mother of three and grandmother of six, author, entrepreneur, and retired professional athlete who broke barriers in action pistol shooting. Through her adulthood, she has enjoyed a variety of outdoor activities, including snow and water skiing, equestrian, windsurfing, and rucking and camping. Action pistol shooting is where she really excelled: Vera has been the national and world titleholder in the sport and won the Bianchi Cup women’s championship eight times. She now competes in shotgun sports, specifically in sporting clay shooting, at the Huntsman World Senior Games.

Vera’s memoirs, “The Most Unlikely Champion” and “Wisdom and Things: Essays from an Unlikely Champion,” share her remarkable journey from China and Hong Kong to the U.S., her family’s entrepreneurial success, and the resilience that carried her through loss, faith, and unexpected triumph. Vera continues to mentor others with the hope that we all discover the “unlikely champion” within ourselves.

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At just eight years old, Margie Mettenet survived a devastating car accident that left her in traction for months. Once she could walk again, she learned to run and didn’t stop: competing in track in the Junior Olympics, high school, and college. Margie also competed in high school basketball and volleyball at BYU, but after college, her 45-year love affair with high-level tennis began. A broken arm nine years ago changed everything, however. Too painful to hold a tennis racquet, Margie picked up a pickleball paddle, “just to stay active,” and got completely hooked. Now 70, Margie plays every day, holds her own against athletes in their 20s and 30s, and is a 12-year veteran of the Huntsman World Senior Games with 11 medals in basketball, tennis, and pickleball. Margie has coached high-school tennis state champions, taught at Club Pickleball USA, and raised a sports-loving family of five kids and nineteen grandkids.

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