By BOBBIE GREEN
The Progress
Ninety-one-year-old fraternal twins Mary Roberts Oxley and Margaret Roberts Hale have recently taken up the game of pickleball. They are proving the popular, new trendy sport is truly fun for all ages.
The twins, both widowed moved to Sun City, Mesquite three years ago after their spouses passed away. They are both still very active. “You have to stay active,” Hale said. “Use it or lose it! That saying is true.”
The twins grew-up together in Maui, Hawaii and went to college in Santa Rosa, California, after being adopted when 6-months-old.
“We don’t know our birth parents but we thank them for our good genes,” Oxley said.
An adopted relative that likes to do genealogy called the twins one day and told them she had found a biological sister to them. They looked her up, but it was too late to get much information. The sister had Alzheimers disease. “Mostly what we wanted was medical history,” Oxley said.
Hale said they took lessons from local pickleball instructor John Sadler because it was on Mary’s bucket list. “Mary used to play tennis and figured she could play pickleball,” she said.
They twins play quite frequently nowadays.
“Now we are hooked!” Hale said.
The two like to play best at the new pickleball courts near the Conestoga Golf course, “because the ball cannot go under the nets.”
But they play in a women’s Round Robin at the pioneer courts as well.
The twins say they also like to play card games and read. Their advice to those younger than them was “Stay Active and socialize with others.”
