Athletes & Volunteers Make Minnesota Senior Games Go [PHOTOS]

ST. CLOUD/SARTELL (WJON News) -- The Minnesota Senior Games came to a close on Sunday. The 4-day event wrapped up with swimming at Tech High School in St. Cloud and mixed pickleball at Sta-Fit in Sartell.

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Mike Weeks of Batesville, Arkansas has been participating in the Senior Games in multiple states for over 7 years and has 776 medals. His goal is to get to 1,000 medals by the time he is 70. Weeks says as long as he can stay healthy he should be able to reach his goal:

"Just depends on, ya know, how I'm feeling because it seems like I'm always hurt because I just do so many of these things it's just always a possibility."

Weeks participated in all 16 swimming events this year as well as the 200 meter dash and all the field events. 84-year-old Craig Walker from Redlands, California has almost 1,200 medals and has been participating for 12 years and says he has no plans on stopping:

"There's nothing like the feeling of going to a swim meet, having so much fun that you forget for a few hours, you forget that you're an old man."

Walker says he does about 25 events a year. Pickleball had the most athletes take part with 226 players. All the matches couldn't take place without the support of the event volunteers.

Lyndsey Stram coordinated all the pickleballers for the 2nd year. She says the schedule is the biggest challenge with trying to keep straight what age group and who is playing when on the 10 courts.

She says all the phone calls and emails with questions can be challenging too and there is one question she had to answer often:

"It's funny in pickleball people can be a little bit snobby about which ball we're playing with, so that has been a big question and the Franklin X-40s is what we're playing with and that's what I've had to tell so many people."

Stram says they work hard to get everyone taken care of before they get to the games. The Senior Games had close to 100 volunteers help coordinate 15 different sports and had over 700 athletes take part from 24 states. Check out photos from some of Sunday's events below.

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