When the pool isn’t available in the spring and fall for maintenance, 94-year-old man lifts weights and plays racquetball: “I sleep better when I exercise.”

New Year’s resolutions got you down? Are you ready to quit? It’s likely that one of those promises to yourself for 2014 was to exercise more and, frankly, if Vern Scott can get going at sunrise to exercise daily so can you.

He was born Oct. 4, 1919.

The Lehi resident walks two miles Monday through Friday at 7 a.m. on the American Fork Fitness Center indoor track, although he admits he has slowed down somewhat since he turned 90 four years ago.

“I really have. I take more naps than I used to. I didn’t used to sleep during the day but now I think every day I take a nap,” he said.

He comes home after exercising, has breakfast and then begins to read the newspaper and will wake up an hour or so later.

The American Fork Fitness Center opened its doors in 1993.

“I bought a membership before it opened,” Scott said. “And they haven’t grounded me yet,” he said and chuckled.

He and his wife, E. May Scott, would walk together on the track and then he would swim laps. May Scott would get in the pool with her husband.

“She wasn’t much for swimming. She would play around in the pool,” he said. May Scott died Dec. 7, 2013.

“She was a sweet lady. A talented one,” he said.

Scott emphasized that he is not an athlete. He learned to swim as a kid in an irrigation canal in Texas.

“I never had a lesson in my life. I’d look at somebody else to see how they do it,” Scott said. “I didn’t own a bathing suit until I was probably 18 years old.”

They have a daughter, Suzanne Scott Jennings, who lives in St. George with her husband, John.

“He never took an exercise class, never entered a competition until he was 80 years old,” said his daughter.

Vern and May Scott would stay at the Jennings home while they competed in the Utah Senior Games Square Dance event each year.

“We did that for two to three years and I just happened to notice while we were down there that swimming was in the program, just a page over,” he said. He talked May Scott into going with him to a swimming event to see what it was like.

They watched a heat.

“As I watched them I thought ‘Well, I can swim faster than those old guys,'” he said.

For 14 years, he has won an average of five gold and silver medals a year, sometimes a bronze. Most of those he has given to one of his 23 grandchildren, and 47 great grandchildren.

“Four years ago at a family reunion he gave a medal to each of his grandchildren and to his children. He still had a bunch left over,” Suzanne Jennings said.

Rebecca Danklef works at the center and says that Scott is a popular icon among the fitness center community.

“We have a bulletin board here at the fitness center dedicated to him when you first walk into our facility. I really believe that others in the community would benefit from his story,” Danklef said, describing him as a super great guy.

When the pool isn’t available in the spring and fall for maintenance, Scott lifts weights and plays racquetball.

“I would like to do it more but it seems to take up too much of my time,” he said about the weights.

He said he plans on entering the 2014 Senior Games but he isn’t sure how he will get to St. George.

“I hope I can do it,” he said. “They’re getting kind of worried about me driving but so far I can do it. If they don’t think I can drive, one of them will probably come and get me.”

He wants to swim in the Senior Games again because he said at his age there isn’t much competition. While exercising has helped define him it has also made his life better.

“I exercise because it makes me feel better all the time. I sleep better when I exercise. When I don’t exercise I don’t sleep real well and I figure that exercise keeps me healthy enough that I can enjoy life better and so I’ve watched what I eat. I don’t eat too much of the wrong things,” Vern Scott said.

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