Name: Are team sports the secret to living longer?
Uploaded: 2026-03-20T16:41:10.000Z
Duration: 6 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This might look like a casual pickup game for retirees, but

these ladies are actually part of a national women's basketball league with a unique set of rules and an annual tournament.

Texas has been selected to host the National Granny basketball tournament.

The criteria for being on the team is 50 and older.

So nothing about physical fitness level, nothing about skill set.

Raise your hand if you never played basketball before.

While the league provides fierce competition and a good time for players and fans, it's also redefining how these retirees find purpose.

And the research shows it might even be helping them live longer.

Every play, every reaction, every question decision becomes a workout, not just for the muscles, but

I went out to meet these grannies to find out how the league got started and grew to having over 50 teams nationwide.

It's a bit of a throwback to before the Great Depression.

It's based on the 1920s rules for the game.

When it was a six on six game, you divided a regular sized court into thirds and you put two players from each of the teams in each of the courts and you could only stay in your court.

Some of the rules of the Granny Basketball League are no running or jumping, no shot clock, only two dribbles per possession and three points for the underhand granny shot.

The uniforms aren't just a fashion statement either.

You couldn't show any flesh, so they wore bloomers and midi blouses and a flesh foul.

So if you and that happened to us at our last game, one of our gals socks rolled down and she was called on a flesh fowl.

Over 20 years ago, Barb Tramiel started the league in Lansing, Iowa.

So I decided, well, I can get together a bunch of people and we can play an exhibition game of this 1920s basketball.

There's 57 teams across the US and one in Canada now, so it's been expanding.

One of the newer teams is the California Poppies, which Barb started after moving to California.

I'm going to go with Barb and they've got a lot of team spirit.

Raise your hand if you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s.

We have players from all walks of life, doctors, teachers, California park rangers, musicians.

I wanted to get more active and live my life to the fullest.

And of course there's lots of coordination and whole body workout with shooting baskets and things too.

It's obvious that we need to stay healthy and active as we get older.

But there's a deeper link between mind and body that has some unseen benefits.

When you're moving, you're basically sparking your body and your brain to wake up.

And when you do this in a group setting, then you're also having the social benefit of connecting with other people.

So a team sport is the best thing you can do not only for your body, but

also for your brain to help stave off dementia, Alzheimer's.

Plus, the mental processing in a competitive game like basketball is giving their brains an essential workout.

Players track movements, make split second decisions and they adapt changing environments.

And this directly engages the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in planning and decision making, and

the hippocampus, which is involved in memory.

The Poppies players emphasize that being part of the team gave them something harder to find.

A newfound sense of community in retirement.

The primary benefit of being part of a team later in life is it combats isolation.

And we know we have an isolation epidemic.

A lack of social connection is unhealthy at any age, but

it can become especially harmful for our health and well being as we get older.

So that's a big issue we see with people as they age is loneliness.

Older people are uniquely vulnerable to social isolation.

They might have physical ailments, a smaller group of friends, or maybe they're just unsure of how to spend their time in retirement.

And that's kind of the whole point of granny basketball.

They have this wonderful outlet of something else to get focused on.

And so a lot of it is mental health and something to look forward to and to be successful at.

You always have a bunch of people around you that are on your side.

For the ladies of Granny basketball, retirement is a chance to chase a new passion.

Our communities evolve as we get older, but we're always seeking connection, better health and forward momentum.

Sports checks all these boxes moving with a purpose.

We travel together, we're aware of everybody's issues and it's just a loving sisterhood.

The Granny Basketball league is giving its players a redefined concept of what retirement can be.

Kind of expanding my network a bit and getting to know some folks I wouldn't have maybe ever come across had it not been for Granny basketball.

We can all take care of each other and I just really appreciate these relationships.