Huntsman World Senior Games Active Life

Kimberly Melton is a seasoned registered dietitian with experience in the health and wellness industry, specializing in nutrition and wellness for longevity. She utilizes a virtual telehealth platform to reach clients of all ages and across diverse socioeconomic and health backgrounds. Her passion is enhancing quality of life, focusing particularly on digestive health, cognitive function, weight m...

Shalee Johansen is the Vice President of Sponsorship and Partner Relations here at the Huntsman World Senior Games. Shalee has over 25 years of extensive experience in tourism and real estate. She enjoys renovating old homes and buildings and even is an alpaca farmer! As a county director of tourism in Northern Utah, a board member of The Helper Project, and executive director of a trails committe...

DonnaJean Wilde hails from Welling, Canada in the Alberta province. She has been a teacher, coach, and vice principal in her career, and she relishes time with her 5 kids and 12 grandchildren. A runner for most of her life, DonnaJean now loves to skip, also known as jumping rope, and she and her husband work out almost daily in their home gym. She has never been the type to want to steal the spotl...

Wisconsin native Kris Rostas is a running enthusiast through and through. At 61 years old, this mother of two has chosen a lifestyle devoid of a couch or television, instead opting to lace up her running shoes every day. While she participated in cross country briefly as a youth, she took up running mostly after her grown children ventured out on their own. The Zion half marathon was life changing...

Lara Ray excelled in track, cross country, and soccer during her youth, ultimately thriving as a fullback in the Olympic Development Program. While on a soccer scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she acquired an art degree. Lara continued her soccer career with the Southern California Blues semi-professional team until knee injuries led her to shift to marathon running, tri...

Jason Curtis is a highly experienced strength and conditioning coach and bestselling author who has published over a dozen books on the development of health, fitness and sports performance. He owns and runs a strength and conditioning gym in the UK and works with hundreds of clients and athletes each week. Alongside the gym, Jason is the founder of The SCC Academy, which has qualified and upskill...

Sanjoy Bhattacharya was born in India and grew up in the Chicago area, finishing all of his education there as an MBA, CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and CFP (Certified Financial Planner). He retired at the age of 41 and moved to St. George 25 years ago. Sanjoy has not slowed down one bit since retiring: he has taken classes in 48 straight semesters at the Utah Tech ICL (Institute for Continued...

Dr. Gordon Larsen, M.D., FACEP is an emergency medicine specialist at St. George Regional Hospital and has over 32 years of experience in the medical field. He graduated from University of Utah medical school in 1991 and completed his emergency medicine residency in Peoria, Illinois at St. France Medical Center. He also completed a wilderness medicine fellowship with the Wilderness Medical Society...

Scott Nielsen is a businessman by day and an equestrian by night. He is currently a project manager and developer at the Black Desert Resort in Ivins, UT and holds an MBA from University of California, Irvine. However one of the biggest challenges of his life happened earlier this year as he completed a 10-day ultra-endurance horse race deep in the wilds of Patagonia in Southern Argentina called t...

After many years in a primarily sedentary lifestyle, John Challis’s health journey began more than two decades ago at the invitation of some friends to go workout early mornings at the high school gym. Initially, he focused on strength training, and several years in, he added walking on the indoor track. Once he joined a gym, he progressed to more aerobic training and started to make changes in hi...

Kay Glynn is a 70-year-old grandmother of 8 who currently resides in Missouri. She began dancing and acrobatics at the age of 4, and this led to owning her own dance and acrobatics studio for over 20 years. Kay was also a high school track and field phenom who held Iowa’s state long jump record for 30 years. Following graduation, she stepped away from the sport for many years and then resumed near...

Joan Young wrote her first story about the outdoors at the age of 7, titled “The Adventures of Skippy the Field Mouse.” Joan’s life has always revolved around the outdoors from walking the woods with her mother to graduating with a Masters degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan and developing a career as a wetland specialist. Now she is a writer of books, articles, and...

Dr. Joseph C. Maroon is a Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, longtime team neurosurgeon to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and neurosurgical consultant for WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). He received his education at Indiana University, Georgetown, University of Vermont, and Oxford University, England and has authored hundreds of scientific peer-review...

Today’s guest is Nate Marshall, a K-12 charter school executive director in Northern Utah. Nate grew up playing a variety of sports, but his favorite was golf. He also became an avid mountain biker, participating in a cross-country biking event that spanned 850 miles from Washington through Oregon and Idaho when he was a high school freshman. In college, Nate began running and coaching a high scho...

Our guest this week is 49-year-old Travis Marchant, a hematology/oncology pharmacist at Intermountain Health. Like many American young men, Travis played basketball and football during high school and believed he could do anything physically challenging. As an adult, back injuries tested his perseverance as he transitioned to running and triathlon training. Travis conquered the inaugural full Iron...

As a proud member of the St. George Marathon Legacy Club, 52-year-old Idonna Clarke, mother of six children and grandmother of 5, is shooting for her 24th marathon later this year. Idonna’s first exposure to a marathon was at the age of 12 in Los Angeles, where she distributed water cups to runners. As a rising freshman at Brigham Young University, she chose a poster of the St. George marathon to...

Dr. Warren Butterfield has been in practice as an orthopedic trauma surgeon since 2007. He came to St. George in 2014 to assist in the transition of then Dixie Regional Medical Center to a level 2 trauma center and is currently the Director of Orthopedic Trauma at Intermountain Southwest Ortho Urgent Care. Dr. Butterfield earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Utah, completed m...

Sandra Checketts, widowed mother of 5 and grandmother of 10, has always enjoyed running, including as a cross country and track competitor at Utah State University. She is full or part owner in several health and wellness businesses and enjoys activities like snowmobiling, swimming, and hiking. Her purpose now for staying healthy is to be able to be active with her grandkids. When she first compet...

Dr. Vonda Wright is an internationally-recognized practicing double-boarded orthopaedic sports surgeon, author, speaker, researcher, and innovator whose work stands in the intersection of longevity, women's health, mobility, and musculoskeletal aging.  Widely recognized for her thought leadership, Dr. Wright is a frequent media and conference expert, having been quoted often in the Wall Stree...

Shelley Sybil Gish has spent most of her life learning about the benefits of holistic healing, with fifty-plus years of experience in behavioral genetics, thirty-one years in alternative health modalities, and ten years in herbology. As the single mother of eight children and the proctor mother of many adjudicated youth, her journey into the world of health began as a necessity to care for her lar...

Jason and Heather Ranoa are the Cycling and Triathlon directors for the Huntsman World Senior Games. We are fortunate enough to have had them for the past 3 years. Jason and Heather coach a non-profit Junior Developmental Cycling team based out of St. George. This team helps develop the future for American talent. Jason and Heather also time and run cycling races at the highest level throughout th...

Nick Cipollino came from humble beginnings and knows the value of hard work. Nick took up sporting clay shooting in 1988 following a knee injury. He was introduced to the Huntsman World Senior Games in 2012, and at the age of 80, he secured gold in all seven shooting events at his first Games. Nick's Army service during the Korean War fueled his competitive spirit, and he has earned around 70...

Ninety-nine-year-old Dutch-Canadian Betty Brussel is happiest when she is swimming. Setting world records, which she did as recently as a week ago, is just icing on the cake. Betty enjoyed swimming as a child when she wasn’t busy helping raise her 10 younger siblings in the Netherlands. Later in life, after she raised her own children, she decided to resume swimming and even compete, beginning at...

Karen Straw was born in Massachusetts and considers herself geographically challenged, having lived in Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific and now calls Utah her home. Karen graduated with her Master’s degree from University of Utah in Speech Language Pathology. She has been working with adults experiencing brain changes her entire career as a S...

At the age of 60, Steve Ault faced a Parkinson's diagnosis and the option of Levodopa for symptom management. Rejecting only temporary relief, he spiraled into depression until a chance meeting with Bahram in August 2017 offered hope for a healthy life at 120. Encouraged by his family, Steve underwent a radical transformation, altering his diet, practicing extended fasting, and engaging in ri...