Photos by Marcus Yam | The Roanoke Times

Helen Walton (left) taunts Warren Rocke, as they bowl Friday using the Nintendo Wii at Our Lady of the Valley nursing home in Roanoke.

Walton bowled with duckpins when she was a youngster.

Rocke, 92, eyes the bowling pins on the Wii screen. Rocke claimed a gold medal with a score of 181 during a tournament in August.

Rene McMahon reacts as Walton misses her pins during a Wii bowling session.

Warren Rocke (left) and Helen Walton face off in Nintendo Wii bowling at Our Lady of the Valley nursing home Friday. Rocke and Walton were scheduled to challenge a team from Friendship Manor, but a stomach bug struck residents and the event was canceled.

For weeks they practiced for the ultimate senior smack down -- or so they thought.

Four residents of Our Lady of the Valley's assisted living facility were scheduled to challenge a team from Friendship Manor in the latest competitive craze to hit the nursing-home set: a Nintendo Wii video game bowling tournament.

But last month a stomach bug struck Our Lady with the force of a broom ball and, soon after, the gamers at Friendship were laid up, too.

"We didn't want to swap viruses," Our Lady activities assistant Gale Brown said, explaining why the match was postponed.

No matter. On a brisk Friday morning, the reigning gold and silver medalists from Our Lady were brushing up their fit-splits and follow-throughs in preparation for the match.

Seated next to her walker is 85-year-old Helen Walton, a retired school bus driver who hadn't bowled since she played the duckpin version, with smaller balls and pins, as a Girl Scout.

She's the slow-and-steady of the two, with a modest backswing of the Nintendo controller that sets the bowl on a roll so slow that her competitor has time to say "Look-ee there, you got it right in the pocket" and "Will you rub my hand for good luck?" before it reaches the virtual pins.

Her rival is Warren "Woody" Rocke, who is 92 and takes zero prescription medications, a feat in itself. He's a retired poultry inspector who hadn't bowled since the days when bosses took their workers out to bowl on Wednesday nights, and an actual person reset the pins.

Rocke's style is hard and fast. The ball emerges on the screen as he lofts the electronic substitute at full speed, if not full accuracy.

A visitor expecting an intense death match between the two -- with dueling sweatbands and sassy repartee -- will not find it in Our Lady's virtual lanes. The bowling-alley beer these days is root beer, and the seniors use their controller "Wiimotes" from a seated position in front of a widescreen TV.

"What a terrible bowl," Woody says of his own near-gutter toss.

But he's chuckling as he says it, which is what Brown hoped for when she introduced the Wii a few months back. Experts have praised the game for providing seniors with low-impact exercise and mental stimulation.

But for Rocke, it returned him to a world he'd left behind during the two years he cared for his wife, Violet, who died in February.

"They were like the couple in that movie 'The Notebook,' " says Brown, referring to the tearjerker about the husband who dutifully cares for his Alzheimer's-stricken wife. "He stayed with her every minute of the day, even after she went into the nursing home."

Although he lost twice to Walton during Friday's match-up (171-151, 148-111), Rocke was thrilled to be playing again, especially after the recent three-week confinement, enacted facility-wide to stem the spread of the flu.

His personal best? In August he bowled a 181, nabbing a gold medal, which he keeps in his room.

"It was fun," he says. "It made us feel important for a while."