Ten Central Ohio senior citizens walked up to a stage at Game Arena on North High Street in Columbus this week to receive custom Team USA jerseys, officially becoming the first senior citizens ever to represent the United States at the Global Esports Games. The athletes, ranging in age from 64 to 76, will compete in a 3v3 Rocket League match against Senior Team Belgium, a matchup announced by Senior Esports USA.
Among them was 72-year-old Ladee Pamela Shields, who competes under the gamer name Mzdu-Wickle and needed assistance getting to the stage during the draft day ceremony, according to WSYX. The draft day event featured players walking up one by one to receive their jerseys, marking the formal transition from local training to international competition. Rocket League, the game at the center of the match, combines soccer rules with rocket-powered cars.
A County Pilot Grows Into an International Team
Senior Esports USA grew out of the Health-e-Gamer Foundation's LevelUpLand initiative, which launched in 2024 and has since engaged more than 2,500 seniors, per the station's report. The program traces back to a July 2024 resolution by the Franklin County Board of Commissioners, created in response to the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 declaration that social isolation among older adults constitutes a national public health crisis, according to Franklin County. The county's Office on Aging partnered with the Health-e-Gamer Foundation to turn that funding into weekly community gaming sessions.
The Health-e-Gamer Foundation itself was founded in 2019 by Dr. Melita N. Moore, a quadruple board-certified physician in sports medicine and brain injury who previously served as a team doctor in the WNBA and NBA 2K League and now chairs the Global Esports Federation's Health and Wellness Commission, according to Forbes. Moore created the foundation to address physical and cognitive wellness, digital equity, and healthy digital habits among gamers. That medical framing carries into how Senior Esports USA trains its athletes: the program evaluates and coaches older adult competitors across 14 distinct areas of health and performance, including cognitive sharpness, physical fitness, nutrition, vision health, emotional intelligence, and stress management, per Senior Esports USA.
From Open Gym to the Global Stage
Athletes progress through four phases before reaching international competition — Open Gym, Development Team, Official Training, and Competition — a structure the organization says functions more like athletic development than casual video gameplay. The Central Ohio squad is now expected to train weekly at Game Arena as it prepares to represent Team USA at the 2026 Global Esports Games, scheduled to run December 1 through 7 in Los Angeles.
That tournament will mark the return of international competitive gaming to the United States as part of the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations, according to Franklin County. Previous editions of the Global Esports Games were hosted abroad, in cities including Singapore, Istanbul, Riyadh, and Mumbai, per the county's announcement. The Los Angeles event will also debut a five-year strategic partnership between the Global Esports Federation and global commerce firm Xsolla, announced in August, to manage digital ticketing, prize distribution, and commerce infrastructure across the federation's more than 180 member federations spanning five continents, according to Business Wire.
Part of a Wider Senior Esports Movement
Central Ohio's squad joins a small but growing international lineage of senior competitive gaming. Sweden's Silver Snipers, a Lenovo-sponsored Counter-Strike team of adults aged 62 to 81, kicked off the movement in 2017 and went on to win the Senior CS:GO World Cup at DreamHack in 2019, according to CGTN Europe. Japan followed in 2021 with its own professional senior team, the Matagi Snipers, for players 65 and older.
Yet the growth of senior gaming runs against persistent gaps in how the industry treats older players. A March 2025 AARP study found that 69 percent of older gamers feel video games are not designed with their age group in mind, and 71 percent said they have never seen older adults represented in video games, according to AARP. A separate AARP technology survey from March 2024 found that 64 percent of adults 50 and older do not feel modern technology is designed with their age in mind, even as half recognize its potential to support healthy aging and independent living.
Weekly Sessions Keep the Door Open Locally
Digital equity and literacy are core pillars of the program locally, and LevelUpLand continues to offer free weekly Senior Gaming Days every Tuesday morning at Game Arena, giving Franklin County residents 60 and older access to PC gaming, consoles, racing simulators, virtual reality equipment, and a complimentary breakfast, according to LevelUpLand. The commercial venue closes its gaming lounge to the public until 1 p.m. every Tuesday to reserve the space exclusively for senior program participants.
It remains unclear how Senior Team Belgium's roster was selected or how the Central Ohio team's travel to Los Angeles in December will be funded, questions Franklin County's own announcement leaves open. Whether the county's model will be replicated by other U.S. municipalities is also an open question. For now, the ten newly jerseyed athletes — with names like Mzdu-Wickle attached to faces well past retirement age — are set to keep training weekly at Game Arena as they aim to be the first senior citizens to represent the United States at the Global Esports Games.
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