At 92, Halverson brings home the gold

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

At age 92, Violet Halverson of Sartell has become something of a celebrity, with her pastor at First Presbyterian Church asking her to stand for a rousing round of applause from the congregation, with news stories published about her and with a flurry of phone calls from people giving their congratulations.

Halverson is a champion. She won the Gold Medal in the national shuffleboard competition in the National Senior Games June 11 in Birmingham, Ala.

“Oh, I loved it,” she said of her big win. “But it took me a couple days to recover. I was a bit achy in the joints.”

Halverson won tops in her age category (90-94), competing against five other ladies there. The event took place in the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex, which Halverson said was “a beautiful place, just beautiful, with people playing on 18 shuffleboards in the complex.” It was right next to the Sheraton Hotel where she stayed.

Halverson lost her first game.

“I was minus 10,” she recalled. “I went into the kitchen, as it’s called in shuffleboard.”

But she made a speedy comeback, winning the remaining seeded games, all six of them.

Cheering her on was her boyfriend Tom Clark’s son, Michael, and his wife, Marcie, who live in the Twin Cities. Tom, who is now living in an assisted-living apartment in Sartell, could not make it to the tournament because of medical issues. But he was rooting from afar, and when he heard the good golden news he was elated.

“Michael and Marcie really cheered me on, and Michael even got to be one of the referees,” Halverson said.

Shuffleboard, also known as “deck” or “floor” shuffleboard, is a game in which players wield sticks shaped rather like crutches (cues) to push weighted discs across the floor, trying to get the discs to come to a stop on one of six designated scoring areas of the scoring triangular “board” – with scoring values being 10, 8, 8, 7, 7 and 10-off (meaning if a disc lands there, it’s a minus-10 score for the player). Players also try to knock opponents’ discs out of scoring zones.

The game, at least 500 years old, was a favorite of King Henry VIII of England, who forbid “commoners” to play the royal game.

Shuffleboard is just one of Halverson’s hobbies. She is also an accomplished wood carver, and she loves to sing and to play harmonica. She and long-time boyfriend Clark have been members of the “Fun Singers” for years, a group that performs at nursing homes, assisted-living complexes and community senior centers.

Her love of woodworking and of shuffleboard began in Arizona. Her first husband, suffering heart trouble, was advised by doctors to move to Arizona and so the couple did. Later, he died. Still later, Halverson remarried. Her second husband was an avid woodworker, and that is how she came to take up woodcarving. She also loved to play shuffleboard while living in Apache Junction and Golden Vista.

“They had an excellent shuffleboard program and good teachers,” she recalled.

After her second husband died, Halverson moved back to Minnesota in 2005 and eventually decided to move into the Grand View Estates apartment complex in Sartell.

She discovered shuffleboard is not quite so common as it is among the senior populations down in Arizona. A couple years ago, she read about the national shuffleboard tournament coming up in two years after state competitions. Halverson went to the Whitney Senior Center to practice and discovered they had to place plastic sheeting down to mimic shuffleboard courts as they did not have the actual courts available. It was at the Whitney tournament that Halverson qualified for the national competition in Birmingham.

“We need more (shuffle) boards up here in this area,” Halverson said. “At church last Sunday, a woman walked up to me and said the same thing – we need boards.”

Halverson chuckled when she told about her missing shuffleboard cue. When her plane landed in Minneapolis, the cue was not to be seen on the baggage carousel. She found out the cue hadn’t been aboard the plane when she was. Days later, the airline flew the cue up to Minnesota via a flight that landed in Brainerd. Then, a taxi driver was hired to bring the cue all the way from Brainerd right to Halverson’s apartment door.

Long life

Halverson was born and raised on a farm near Hinckley. After high school she served in the U.S. Army during World War II. She and her first husband adopted three children and lived in Little Falls where he served as a county agent and she served as a homemaker.

Many people ask Halverson her secret to such a long, productive life.

“Stay active,” she said. “Don’t sit around.”

And shuffleboard happens to be just one way Halverson stays active and healthy.

She definitely plans to enter state competition again next year, and – who knows? – she just might bring the gold home again from the next nationals.