Editor’s note: Ray Glier is a veteran reporter and author who lives in Atlanta. His work has appeared in many major news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, ESPN, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, Vice, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many others. He has created Geezer Jock News, a website devoted to senior athletes. Contact him at ray@geezerjocknews.com
By Ray Glier for VolleyballMag.com
“I’m gifted with not being able to jump high.”
Who would say such a thing? Jumping high in athletics is supposed to be a gift from the Gods. When you are able to soar you make highlight reel catches in football, breath-taking dunks in basketball, leaping catches over the outfield wall in baseball.
It must have been a golfer who said that.
It wasn’. It was a volleyball player, an athlete who typically would kiss a hot iron to add an inch to his vertical.
But Boyd Haynes, 64, is not your typical volleyball player.
He is an orthopedic doctor in Newport News, Virginia, and he plays on a very good volleyball team with an uproarious nickname, The Bonesetters. Haynes really did say the blasphemous thing about leaping ability being overrated.
There are some true revelations to be had when you talk to an athlete who happens to be an orthopedic surgeon and has been around a while.
Like this whopper of a paradox:
“Be careful what you wish for in great genetics. Your mom and dad might have blessed you with great leaping ability. But what goes up, comes down hard, especially for the sky walkers. They are not high jumpers forever. It takes a brutal toll on their knees.”
Dr. Haynes has been at his orthopedic business about 30 years, which is about the time he started playing volleyball. A very good soccer player growing up in Richmond, Virginia, he just happened into the net game — “looking for something to do” — after residency and it stuck. In a big way.
Boyd mixed in with younger guys and they melded into Bonesetters, which was first a short-lived enterprise of selling Bonesetters gear of tee-shirts, and the like. His practice demanded time so he ditched selling gear, kept the name … and the team.
Three decades later the core group of eight is still going at it and they have taken their game to the National Senior Games and various state senior games. They’re good, even with Haynes at 64 playing in tournaments against men who are 50.
In the National Senior Games last spring, the Bonesetters took…
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