Returning to sports

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)