During a recent break in the action, a dance squad stormed the court for the Washington Wizards. Donning bright red, white and sparkly blue outfits, they spun, they shimmied, they even did some light twerking. They looked like any dance team a fan might expect to see at an NBA game, except for one difference: They were all over the age of 50.

The “Wizdom” dance team, as the squad is called, first took the court for the Wizards in November and has performed at several home games ever since. The 19 women and one man who make up the squad range in age from 50 to 76, and they include former NFL cheerleaders, a dentist, several grandmothers and a breast cancer survivor.

“We are part of what I like to call the ‘Fame,’ ‘Flashdance’ and ‘Let’s Get Physical’ generation,” says Wizdom dancer Cindy Hardeman, 60. “We’re just taking it into our elder years,” she says, later adding “If we were to top it in order of why we do it, I’d say fun, fun and fun.”

With contagious enthusiasm, team members are almost always dancing: in the locker room, walking to practice, lining up to perform.

“They’re very well-rehearsed, perform with a lot of energy, charisma, style, and are just entertaining to watch,” says the team’s choreographer, Derric Whitfield. “The audience can get behind them because they are so good. It’s not just, ‘Oh that was cute,’ it’s ‘Wow they really can dance.'”

More than 50 people tried out for the Wizdom — a rigorous audition process that was documented by the team’s sponsor, the AARP. With their debut in November, they became one of at least a dozen other squads for dancers who are 50 or older in the NBA. By the time the season is over, Whitfield says, the team will have learned and performed seven routines in total.

Some who made the team tried out because they had performed as professional dancers or cheerleaders years ago, and wanted to do so again. Some were looking for a way to get more exercise or were talked into it by their grandchildren.

For others, the team has helped them to overcome hardships.

“I was laying around having a pity party cause I lost my husband eight years ago and my mother two years ago and in between I had brain surgery,” says one member of the team who asked to be identified, fittingly, as “Nana.” At 76, she is the oldest member of the team. “This is really lifting my spirits,” she says.

Kristina Leach, 68, is another member of the Wizdom. A former cheerleader for Washington’s NBA team, she lost her husband a few years ago. One year later, the restaurant where she worked for 40 years closed down. She says dancing for the Wizdom is the “best thing to happen to me.”

The team is extremely dedicated, Whitfield says. One member, for example, performed right after a prolonged nose bleed. Some have chronic health conditions, but train together outside of the team’s official weekly practices.

“To our surprise we are able to do things we didn’t think we could do,” says Christopher Johnson, 53, the one male member of the team. “It’s motivating us to even go further, to practice more, to be part of other dance classes.”

The group’s last performance is on April 9. They’ll all have to tryout again next year if they want to rejoin the team.

But members of the Wizdom say that won’t keep them apart. They’ve already planned cookouts and pool parties for the off-season. As “Nana” puts it, the team has become a family.

“We go through our aches and pains together,” she says. Then she adds: “Anyone have Tylenol Extra Strength? Give me three!”

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Muffet McGraw, the two-time championship-winning head coach of women’s basketball at University of Notre Dame, was dancing a jig and celebrating Friday night after leading her team to victory over the University of Connecticut.

The NCAA women’s basketball championship game is now set for Sunday — setting up a possible third win for McGraw — with the reigning national champion Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish taking on No. 1 seed the Lady Bears of Baylor University.

But this past Thursday, McGraw’s mood was more serious when answering a question about her recently reported commitment to never hire another male coach for her staff.

She began talking about the decades that the Equal Rights Amendments has gone without ratification: “We need 38 states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional. We’ve had a record number of women running for office and winning. And still, we have 23 percent of the House and 25 percent of the Senate.”

McGraw was responding to a question about being the “voice” of female coaches in college athletics after University of Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, who won 1,098 games with the Lady Volunteers for more than 38 years, died in 2016.

McGraw’s two-minute response, touching on the long history of sexism in many American institutions, went viral.

“I’m getting tired of the novelty of … the first female governor of this state. The first female African-American mayor of this city,” she said. “When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception? How are these young women looking up and seeing someone that looks like them, preparing them for the future? We don’t have enough female role models. We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

She said girls are socialized to think “men run the world.” Where better to counter that narrative than in sports, she asked.

“When you look at men’s basketball and 99 percent of the jobs go to men, why shouldn’t 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women’s basketball go to women? Maybe it’s because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I. People hire people who look like them. And that’s the problem.”

In 1972, Title IX enacted gender equity policies in student athletics as part of a law. Two years later, more than 90 percent of women’s teams in college sports had female coaches, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.

That number has fallen drastically. The center’s newest report based on data from last year found the percentage of female head coaches had increased slightly from previous years, but only to 41.8 percent. The group took data from 86 institutions that were part of the NCAA Division I “big time” conferences.

In basketball specifically, the percent of women coaching women was 59.3 in 2018.

Notre Dame player Jessica Shepard responded to McGraw, “Talk that talk then coach.” Notre Dame forward Brianna Turner, who scored her 2,000th career point Friday, just wrote on Twitter: “Take notes.”

Samantha Brunelle, a high-profile incoming recruit to Notre Dame, tweeted the video of McGraw’s answer, saying it was “one of the many reasons why Notre Dame was the place for me.”

“I aspire to be like her one day,” Brunelle told the South Bend Tribune of South Bend, Ind. “She stands for women so much. She has a huge voice to help give us women more of a platform.”

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On a recent 50-degree bluebird day at Big Bear Mountain outside Los Angeles, skiers in short sleeves partied with loud music and beer and bragged about how many days they have spent at the mountain this season.

“It’s been at least 10,” said Daniella Gogatz.

“This is day 31,” said Ken Ryan. “It’s cost me about $20 or less a day at this point.”

While the prices of ski lift passes have been skyrocketing, the industry has been embracing new multiresort season passes that are cheaper than ever. They’ve proven popular though also controversial.

Gogatz and Ryan are able to afford to ski so much because they bought Ikon passes, which were just introduced this season by the the Alterra Mountain Company.

Ikon is priced starting at around $600 and includes access to dozens of resorts and some of the most famous ski mountains in the world, including Aspen, Jackson Hole and Deer Valley.

Ikon, and its main competitor, The Epic Pass, which was introduced a decade ago, have made it possible to ski for an entire season for what you could spend on a three-day lift ticket, as long as you commit early.

But some locals complain the passes are destroying the character of their beloved mountains.

“We’re seeing more people on the hill and longer lift lines and whenever you’re waiting in one of those lines you’ll hear some local quip about the Ikon passholders,” said Matt Maydick, who lives in Carbondale, Colo., right outside Aspen.

Maydick, himself an Ikon passholder, says he is happy more people are getting to enjoy his favorite sport but he is frustrated by the growing pains.

Ikon passholders have been accused of not only making the mountain too crowded but also of being in over their heads.

There has been more hostility in Jackson Hole. When Joe Cascia of New Jersey visited recently, he encountered a local who griped about Ikon passholders for being cheap and not spending enough at local restaurants.

“I’m not sure why he would seen that as a negative, because I think everybody should be trying to save money,” said Cascia, who said he pointed out that he had just spent almost $200 on dinner.

Cascia’s girlfriend usually proudly displays her Ikon pass on her helmet but at Jackson Hole he thought it would be better for her to hide it.

“I even told her you might want to put that in your pocket here because it just didn’t feel 100 percent welcome,” Cascia said.

Resorts have tried to ease tensions by pointing out that Ikon passholders are not the only reason for overcrowding and that resorts gain valuable revenue from the pass.

Taylor Middleton, the general manager of Big Sky Resort in Montana, even penned an open editorial to local residents ordering them to be nicer.

“Recently, local social media channels are revealing a rash of really negative postings, shunning new visitors and treating new arrivals differently than we were treated ourselves,” wrote Middleton. “We were all new at some point; these guests are our newest visitors.”

In fact, Ikon passholders only account for a small increase in the number of visitors at most resorts this season. The biggest reason for the crowds is this season’s heavy snow, according to resort owners.

“I think the Ikon pass is somewhat unfairly blamed by some,” said Middleton.

Like it or not, the pass is here to stay, according to Erik Forsell, Alterra chief marketing officer.

“We definitely launched with the idea of disrupting in a positive way the ski industry and we did,” said Forsell.

Forsell says resorts like locking in guaranteed revenue in case of a bad snow year.

Next season’s pass went on sale last month, starting at $649.

One skier from Salt Lake City commented on the Facebook announcement: “You have ruined skiing. Please stop.”

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Flo Filion Meiler is a world-class athlete who lives in Shelburne, Vt. At the indoor World Masters Athletics Championships in Poland last week, Meiler, who is 84, racked up medal after medal in her age division.

Golds in high jump, pentathlon, 60-meter hurdles, and pole vault. Silvers in long jump and triple jump. Oh, and another gold in the 4×200 relay. “The four of us ladies in our 80s set a new world record,” she told NPR this week.

But wait — the pole vault?

Indeed. Meiler took up track and field at age 60, and as she watched the pole vaulting competition at the Senior Olympics, she had a notion.

“They weren’t pole vaulting very high,” she remembers. “And I said to myself, you know, I think that I could do better than that.

So at a sprightly 65, she took up the event. “I love challenges, and the pole vault is a challenge. You have to have a really strong upper body, upper core and very strong arms.”

No problem for Meiler, who was competitive slalom water-skier for 30 years. “I think that’s why I’ve done so well in it, is because of the way I’ve always handled my body.”

At last week’s world championships, she was the only pole vaulter in her age division, though there were a few men in the 80-84 field. Meiler notes that she was far from the oldest athlete taking part in the meet. “There was a lady from India who was 103. … She didn’t run very fast, but she did it!”

All that winning takes a lot of training, and Meiler keeps a rigorous schedule. She says no longer has time to ski, as she devotes herself five to six days a week to her workouts.

“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will do track events. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will do machine weights. Then I will play doubles tennis, but that’s just social tennis.”

She mostly trains alone, but she has a coach at the University of Vermont to help her get competition-ready. “I have her help me, let’s say, with my shot put. And I have her help me doing the high jump and so forth.”

A year ago, she started having hamstring problems and knew it was due to getting older. So she doubled the time she devotes to stretching and warming up. “It makes a world of difference in not being injured,” she says.

The competition may be thinning, but Meiler doesn’t see retirement anytime soon.

“You know, if the good Lord gives me my health, I’m going to keep going forever.”

Right now she’s focused on the upcoming Senior Olympics in Albuquerque, N.M., and she’s eagerly anticipating her birthday in June – an occasion that will shift her into the next age bracket.

“I’m looking forward to being 85,” Meiler says, “because then I’ll be at the bottom of the ladder, and I’m going to look at all these records and see what I can do about ’em.”

NPR’s Sarah Handel and Art Silverman produced the audio version of this story.

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