By Jennifer Coco
Sport provides not only physical activity and fitness, it also provides social connection. In team sports like volleyball, it can create a tight bond among team members. The women’s 60+ Senioritas volleyball team has been through many trials and tribulations together and has proven to themselves it is much more than a game.
The Senioritas, mostly based in New York, have played together for nearly 15 years. While they have lost a couple of players and gained new ones, the majority of the roster has stayed the same and have been there for each other.
Cindy Hynes, the team’s setter, found out she had a neck tumor in 2015. It reappeared three times, but she came out stronger every time. One year later, the team lost one of their members to cancer, and captain Lois Campbell needed open heart surgery for a genetic heart disease. If that wasn’t enough, in 2018 Cathy Rossi was diagnosed with breast cancer and Pat Hanlon was diagnosed with a melanoma.
Clearly this team has been through a lot but they have stood by one another through it all. “I don’t know if I could have survived without my girlfriends,” Cathy says. This is their first time seeing one another in two years due to the pandemic and they are happy to be back on the court playing with their sisters again.