How old is too old to play volleyball?
Robert Luscombe of Lansing hasn’t found out yet. He’s about to turn 85, and he’s still playing volleyball each Tuesday evening at the Foster Community Center, as he's done for more than two decades.
Wearing a trademark baby blue sleeveless T-shirt and bulky knee pads, Luscombe still shows off a mean and accurate serve.
“I just play because I enjoy it. I want to keep active. My doctor told me to stay active so I play volleyball. Even the opposite team roots for me,” he said. “They’re rooting for me because of my age.”
Besides Luscombe’s Depression-era birth date, there’s something else pretty notable about the group: It’s about as diverse a mix of people as you can find.
It’s a co-ed team of multiple races and a wide range of ages as well as players from blue and white collar backgrounds. The tallest is 6’ 4” and the shortest is 5’, and one player is partially paralyzed from a stroke.
Hispanic teens play alongside young African American players as well as white guys with gray hair.
Luscombe said the volleyball team is his family.
The diversity “just happened,” said Rodney Wilson, 57, a Michigan Department of Transportation senior compliance investigator who has been playing for more than 20 years with the program.
“When I came in 1994, they welcomed me with open arms. At that time, I was the only black person. Over the course of time, more women and a whole bunch of people started coming,” he said.
Wilson cheerleads for the volleyball program and for over-50 sports in general. He competes in Senior Olympics and other competitions in track and field. He said he’s inspired by Luscombe’s persistence to stay active.
“Robert still serves the ball and gets mad at us if we take it easy on him, so sometime we don’t and he loves it. He does miss the ball at times because his reflexes are not like a 25- or 50-year-old,” Wilson tells me.
When I dropped by to watch the game I found a group of more than a dozen people having fun and trading mild insults. The competition was friendly and both sides cheered Luscombe with such shouts as “Way to go, Robert” or “Send it home, Robert.”
Some are very good players, diving for the ball and sliding on their backs or chests on the floor after making nearly impossible saves, while others, like Luscombe, wait for the ball to come to them to give it a quick pop over the net or to another player.
Luscombe, who lives in Lansing, still has a yard-maintenance company he founded more than 50 years ago. He also had careers as a truck driver and contract painter. And he's been a country music performer and comedian since he was a teen.
His band, Weeping Willow Ramblers, played around Michigan in the 1950s and he said he was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry from 1951-1955 and from 1958-1962, singing and doing comedy, traveling to Nashville for the Saturday performances.
He last appeared with Grand Ole Opry star Ernie Ashworth for a fundraiser at Sexton High School in 2005.
Now he performs monthly at the Eaton Rapids Senior Center and a blue grass jamboree at Woodhull Township Hall in Shaftsburg.
He doesn’t sing songs about drinking or prison and he keeps his comedy clean, he said. (“Where does a sick boat go? To the dock.”)
He’s a lifetime athlete, playing tennis, basketball, softball and baseball since his days as a student at Sexton High School in the 1940s. He once played 16 hours straight in a volleyball marathon. He would have gone longer but he missed a portion because of his truck driving job.
Now, he plays volleyball twice a week, rides a bike two miles a day and does yard work a few days a week because he needs the money.
Brett Kaschinske, director of Lansing Parks and Recreation, said Luscombe is impressive but he isn’t the oldest participant in city sports. He is a decade younger than a 94-year-old softball player.
The city has a 70-and-over senior softball league and a 50-and-over basketball league.
“It gives those of us who are younger than that definitely something to shoot for,” said Kaschinske, 45.
For more information
The Adult Volleyball Lifetime Sports Program, call the Lifetime Sports Office at (517)483-4039 or http://www.lansingmi.gov/Lifetime_Sports_Programs.
