Fitness club kicked out senior women, but they didn’t take no for an answer
Their laughter echoes around the pool as a brightly colored beach ball bounces through the air.
It’s hard not to crack a smile watching the women leap wildly to keep it aloft.
For more than two decades, a group of friends from around the Valley turned to water volleyball twice a week for joy and exercise as they’ve battled cancer, raised children and grandchildren, counted gray hairs and gone through life’s ups and downs.
They’ve cheered as one member’s daughter — Misty Hyman — won an Olympic gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly and mourned as others have lost husbands.
But last week, they reluctantly prepared to play their last game.
LA Fitness announced months ago it would close the north Scottsdale location where the women play. The group made a deal to move to a different LA Fitness.
But days before the closure, gym officials told them the deal was off. The women asked other pools to host them and had no luck.
They were devastated.
“It’s been a tough week,” said Wendy Walker, 64, who helped found the group. “These girls are like family. We have women from 58 to 81 years old. We play and we bounce around and we splash and we laugh until our ribs hurt. To think after 25 years this could be over is really tough.”
Members have played despite casts on broken bones, pacemakers, diabetes and car accidents. Walker is fighting metastatic breast cancer.
“We’re diehards,” said 67-year-old Linda DeHope.
Linda Aja — considered “the baby” at 58 — believes the quick thinking needed to hit the ball over the net helps stave off Alzheimer’s.
“When I get in the water, I forget how crappy I feel,” she said. “To not be able to do this, I think I’m going to go downhill.”
The support from the friendships keeps the women strong too, they say.
They throw parties, pull pranks on each other and visit loved ones in the hospital. To cheer up Walker recently, the group colored a picture captioned “Well-behaved women seldom make history” and added funny quotes she says during games.
“It’s women supporting women,” Walker said.
‘Seniors count, too’
After LA Fitness announced it would close the location the women have used since 2013 at Thunderbird and Scottsdale roads, they thought they had found a new home.
Walker and Margaret Hyman (the gold medalist’s mom) talked with a manager at the LA Fitness at McCormick Ranch a few miles away, Walker said.
“We were assured that we would be able to continue to play at our scheduled time at her facility,” Walker said. “(The manager) showed us where we could store our equipment, and we all agreed that the transfer would be made in a couple of months when the current facility closed.”
But when the women recently contacted the McCormick Ranch manager to finalize the transfer, an LA Fitness district manager called back to say the women couldn’t play, according to Walker.
The district manager said he was worried about liability and not having enough room in the pool, Walker said. He suggested they instead play in the basketball gym, she said.
The women argued the game is safer in water where they can’t fall. They promised two swim lanes would always be open and offered to adjust the times they played, if necessary.
The manager wouldn’t budge, Walker said.
She called LA Fitness headquarters but was told the group would be barred from every location, she said.
“LA Fitness nicely told us to eat worms,” Walker joked.
Other pools she approached also turned down the group.
The women couldn’t understand. They’re friendly toward staffers and guests, they said. They set up, tear down and store their own equipment. They clean up the locker room when members leave it dirty and turn off showers when others leave the water running, they said.
“We’d be clean and neat wherever we go,” DeHope said.
They wondered: Did the gyms not want them because of their age or their women-only membership?
“I know a lot of the clubs look upon the younger people as longer-term clientele. But seniors count, too . ... We’re more financially solvent. When dues are due, we’re going to pay them,” Walker said. And “if you’re playing with a bunch of 6-foot guys spiking the ball, that would be a liability issue because we could get hurt.”
‘A very, very sad day’
Misty Hyman, who attributes her love of water to her mother, said she was devastated the group might break apart.
“It’s been a very special part of my mom’s life,” Hyman said.
As an incentive, Hyman offered to give a motivational seminar based on her Olympic story and teach a swimming clinic at any pool that agreed to host the women.
Even that didn’t help.
“It’s going to be a very, very sad day when my mom and her friends can’t play anymore,” Hyman said.
A little help from Call for Action
In a last attempt, Walker asked Call for Action at The Arizona Republic to investigate.
A reporter left messages with two LA Fitness managers and sent emails to corporate headquarters. No one answered.
But that same day, Walker received a call.
It was the manager who previously said the group would not be allowed at any location, Walker said.
The company had changed its mind. The women will be able to play when they want, where they want, Walker said.
“Wow, a call from me did nothing. A call from you changed their minds,” she told The Republic. “I was really starting to lose hope.”
“Everybody’s celebrating. Everybody’s just so thrilled.”