KAMSACK — As Kamsack district residents headed out to the pickleball courts on May 7, and to the golf course on May 8, they may be buoyed knowing that one of their number has a few “Olympic” gold and silver medals he’s won while they were at home shovelling snow during the winter.
Darryl Binkley of Madge Lake, who with his wife Trudi, spends January, February and March each winter in a trailer park home in Tucson, Arizona, returned to Saskatchewan this year with two Tucson Senior Olympics gold medals: one in pickleball which he had won with his partner Jeff Buck of Oregon, the other medal he won was in golf.
Last year in the same competitions, Binkley won gold in golf, but only silver with Buck in pickleball.
The Tucson Senior Olympics were played on Jan. 12, Binkley said, explaining that he and Buck were in the 70-years-and-up category and in the round robin play they met the same couple who had defeated them last year.
“We lost 8-11 in the first of the final three games, but then in the last two games won 11-9 and 11-4 to get the gold,” he said.
Binkley was one of 24 competitors to win gold in golf at the competition, marking the second consecutive year he topped the seniors’ golf event.
He explained that while living at Madge Lake last year, he had competed in 12 senior golf tournaments in the area, including at Madge Lake, Kamsack, Yorkton, Melville and Hudson Bay, and had won 10 of them.
Although he tends to concentrate on golf in the summers, playing mostly at Madge Lake and Kamsack, he has been heading into the gym in the autumn to play pickleball.
He said he planned to be at the Broda Sportsplex on May 7 to help inaugurate the site as a summertime pickleball court and will be at Riverside Golf Course in Kamsack on May 8 for the opening of its season.
“When we go to Tucson, I’m mostly on the golf course,” he said.
