(Credit: Bruce Rubin/Facebook)
A Worcester Township 80-year-old a is seeking peers like him to trust the process that their knees or back do not give out.
With knees creaking and ankles groaning, The Bucks Mont Warriors Senior 3-on-3 basketball team is searching for some new players to join its geriatric squad and defy the notion that age is a barrier on the court. The only requirements, according to a Fox29 article, are to be tall and at least 80 years old.
Bruce Rubin, a shooting guard grandfather on lives on Oak Circle, just across the street from Upper Gwynedd Township, is on a recruiting mission for his gray-haired Sixers. According to the article, the team kicked off a 79-year-old player because he was "too young.”
"The perfect player would be 6’5, 6'6 who can travel, plays all the time. And has to be 80 years old" said Rubin in the article.’
The Warriors are a spirited group of senior citizens aiming to reclaim the glory days on the hardwood. These wily veterans are on a quest to prove age is just a number – and that jump shots only get sweeter with time.
Rubin, a former Temple University Fox School of Business employee and current director of The Nimble Leader consulting group, is the epitome of perseverance and refusing to quit: He runs daily, he kept his hobby going in the painful wake of his wife Gail’s death in 2017, he has participated in the Penn Relays, and he just finished his final radiation treatment for Stage 3 breast cancer, per the report. Yes, Rubin continued to play during all his 20-plus treatments.
"You don’t have to play basketball or run for a track club in the Penn Relays, but you have to be active and do something,” Rubin said in the article.
The search for new recruits is a pursuit for Rubin as epic as Joel Embiid’s chase for an MVP title.
According to Fox29, Rubin, a New York native who used to ball in the 1970s in North Wales Borough, plays pickup games with players as young as his grandson at the Pennbrook Middle School gym on Wednesdays.
"I’ve been doing this eight years, and he’s been out here the whole time and is amazing each and every time I don’t know how he finds the energy" added Adam Douglas of Lansdale in the article.
According to the article, the Warriors will represent Pennsylvania at the National Senior Games, as it has for the past 15 years.
This year, the team heads to the 2025 Senior Games in Iowa to complete against other Grandpa Embiids in the 80 to 85-year-old group, per the report.
This article was previously posted on the old North Penn Now site, and was republished here on April 2, 2024.
