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For printable image click here. The national champion Delaware Blue Chicks. UD’s Paula Klemm is in the front row kneeling, second from right.

The Delaware Blue Chicks 50+ softball team won the national championship at this year's games, held in June in Louisville, Ky. “This time we got a good draw, we played well, things came together and we won gold,” Paula Klemm, professor of nursing in the University of Delaware's School of Nursing and right fielder on the team, said.

Nonetheless, Klemm is quick to emphasize that not every game has been especially worthy of memory, and recalls a time in the not-too-distant past when her current team--comprised of 16 players over 50 years of age--struck out very publicly at the 1999 National Senior Olympics, held that year at Disney World. “That was our first year at the Senior Olympics,” Klemm, 57, said, “and we didn't play competitively at all.”

Like most true athletes, however, Klemm and her teammates picked themselves up and dusted themselves off and used the experience as a spur to better their game. In 2001 (the National Senior Olympics are held every two years), the Delaware Blue Chicks 50+ softball team finished fifth in the country; in 2003 they finished tenth; in 2005 they were back to fifth; and

The team, which Klemm formed in 1997 after she played a scrimmage game against a 50+ team from Pennsylvania, includes nine Delaware residents and five out-of-staters, and is one of five competitive softball teams in Delaware in which all players are over the age of 50. (Two of the five teams are comprised of players who are all over the age of 60; and a sixth team of players 55 years and older currently is forming.) Klemm's team is the only 50+ team that ever has gone to the National Senior Olympics, although this year one of the 60+ teams went as well, and placed fourth in the nation in its age category.

“In order to qualify for the National Senior Olympics, a team has to win either a gold or a silver medal in its state,” Klemm said. “I was delighted that a Delaware team won the national championship. The Senior Olympics provides an excellent opportunity for senior athletes to stay healthy and active while competing against people their own age.”

Media contact: Becca Hutchinson, (302) 831-1418, [playfair@udel.edu]
July 24, 2007