OLDS - Ninety-year-old Louise Schille of Olds is hoping she'll be able to get out for at least one more golfing season next year.
"I hope I can golf next year," she says.
Her husband, Toby, was forced to give up the game this season. The two of them had been golfing enthusiastically since their early 20s.
For Schille, the highlight of the 2018 golfing season occurred more than a month ago when she got a hole-in-one on the seventh hole at the Olds Golf Club. She used a rescue club.
Schille downplays the accomplishment.
"It was easy. I just hit my ball and as soon as I hit it, somebody said, 'go in the hole' and it rolled up on the green and rolled slowly into the hole. We all saw it," she says, referring to the other members of her foursome.
"It's luck, let's put it that way."
Louise and Toby began playing golf in Calgary when she was about 21, shortly after they got married.
"We just decided that was the thing we were going to do and we did," she says, adding that they may have been inspired by her brother, who was an avid golfer.
"It's something you could do together," she says.
"I've played a lot of golf. I'm not a good golfer; never have been. But I enjoy it," Schille says.
"I love the exercise, especially when the weather's nice. And I always plan to do better, because I guess I'm called an avid golfer, because I always want to do better."
Schille says the strongest part of her game is on the green.
"My putting has always sort of rescued me," she says with a laugh.
However, "I'm having problems on these greens now. They're making them so fast. They do them for the pros, not for us people. They're so fast."
Louise and Toby used to curl in the winter but haven't done so for the past few years out of fear of falling.
Wade Bearchell, the Olds Golf Club's pro and manager, says Schille and her accomplishments on the fairways have been an inspiration to her fellow club members, especially the ladies.
"Louise's biggest fans are the ladies who are members of this club because they're so excited," he says. "They're more excited than she is for her success and the hole-in-one and the fact that she's still avid at 90 years old."
Bearchell estimates the club had about five holes-in-one this past season, the latest occurring in late October.
"It's kind of been a funny year," he says. "We didn't have hardly any holes-in-one. Or we had few holes-in-one for most of the year and then I had three holes-in-one in the last two months from members."
He says five holes-in-one is a smaller number than usual at the Olds Golf Club.
"That's a little bit low," Bearchell says. "It just all depends. Sometimes they go in the hole, sometimes they don't."
Bearchell notes over the years he and Schille have each had a few holes-in-one.
"The first couple I had were good shots and then the last one I had was not a good shot and went in the hole," Bearchell says. "It was nothing I was extremely proud of."
"I would rather -- if I had a lousy shot -- that it not go in the hole, because that proves that it's luck," he adds.
Schille agrees.
"And that's what it is, for sure," she says.
