Benner, a chemical engineer from Costa Mesa, hooked up with the Nova Masters Swimming Program in Irvine and found that jumping back in the water wasn’t as easy as he had thought. (Allen Schaben / LAT)
Sometimes Richard Dessert wrestles guys his own age, sometimes he wrestles high school students. (Richard Hartog / LAT)
Dessert’s physical therapist suggested he try wrestling for its core-strengthening attributes. (Richard Hartog / LAT)
Dessert, an artist and poet, made his way back to wrestling almost two years ago. (Richard Hartog / LAT)
Dessert wrestled in high school and at Cal Poly Pomona, finding it a good fit “because it’s kind of a mix between a team and an individual sport.” (Richard Hartog / LAT)
Elizabeth Chase hung up her skates as a teen but is competing again at 40. (Annie Wells / LAT)
At the direction of her coach, Chase practices her moves again and again as she strives to lift her leg a little further, spin a little faster and jump a little higher. (Annie Wells / LAT)
When Chase was an 11-year-old growing up in Pacific Palisades, her mother would ferry her, before dawn, almost every day to the now-defunct Santa Monica Ice Rink. (Annie Wells / LAT)
Bernie Miller savors pole vaulting at 46. (Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Three years ago, Miller picked up a pole, planted it in the ground and once again flew. (Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Miller got his first taste of vaulting in junior high when he joined the track team. (Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Miller had loved the feeling of sailing through the air the very first time he had launched himself with nothing more than a steel pole when he was in the seventh grade. (Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
Miller’s athletic youth was spent in something of a tussle between his twin devotions to pole vaulting and baseball. (Allen J. Schaben / LAT)
