Fitzgerald's speed on the base paths leads to a new sport

Marjorie Fitzgerald was a softball player not a runner. Not once in her 70-some years had she ever dashed around a track. But while playing on her senior women's softball team, California Spirit, she showed some speed as she rounded the bases.

That got player-coach Cathy Nicholson thinking. "I watched her for about five years," Nicholson recalls. "And after a while, I thought: 'This is remarkable.'"

So Nicholson, a retired teacher who once coached high school track, talked Fitzgerald into running in the 50- and 100-meter dashes at meets such as the Huntsman World Senior Games, an event that their softball team had been competing in for a number of years. Nicholson supervised Fitzgerald's workouts at a community college track.

Their work did not always bring smooth results. The first time Fitzgerald entered a race and heard the gun go off, she jumped straight up in the air instead of running. So the next year, they worked on her starts. Soon she was coming smoothly out of the blocks and setting national records and racking up first-place finishes. "I'm just happier than heck to have all those medals," says Fitzgerald, now 81.

In 2007, Fitzgerald broke the USA Track and Field national record for the women's 80-84 age group in the 100-meter dash with a time of 18.76. She followed that up in October at the Huntsman Games, where she set a Huntsman age-group record for the 50- meter dash with a time of 9.85.

Next year, Fitzgerald will compete in the 100-meter dash at the 2009 Senior Olympic Games. There is no 50-meter run in those games so Nicholson is eyeing the 200. "She wants me to try it," Fitzgerald says, adding with a laugh: "I hope she doesn't talk me into it."