If it’s Wednesday, Charlie “Poss” Drumm is at the Tuckaseegee Recreation Center in Charlotte, playing the game that is his passion.

About two dozen men gather in the gymnasium, many in elastic knee or elbow braces, most with water jugs and towels stored on bleachers. There are heavy-set men and slender ones, quick shooters and fast talkers, bonded for the afternoon in the hot, stagnant air reasserting their reverence for basketball.

Two requirements regulate play in this clique – be 50 or older, and love the game.

At 80, Drumm is the eldest. He doesn’t wear a brace, doesn’t carry water, but his skills at this 4-on-4 ritual are compatible with the rest of these players who have been meeting at Tuckaseegee for more than a decade.

“For him to be out there, running around like we do, and still come back for another day, that’s incredible,” said Tony Huntley, 58, a Wednesday regular since he became eligible.

The men play for three hours, year-round, and compete in tournaments in May and December.

Barbara Drumm, Charlie’s wife of 53 years, understands the grip basketball can have on a player. “His love of basketball is like how we love to breathe fresh air. It just comes natural for him,” she said. “I think it was natural for him since he was a young child.”

Drumm was born in Mount Holly and discovered sports early. “I was playing by the time I was 8 years old,” he said, “but it was just for fun.”

He played competitively in junior high, then added four years of basketball, and three years of golf, football and baseball at Mount Holly High School. His best friend, Harold Helton, started calling him “little Poss,” after Drumm’s father’s nickname, and it stuck.

Of all he did, the basketball of the 1948-49 and 1949-50 seasons was his favorite. Drumm, at 5-foot-10, played point guard, and led the 1950 MHHS team to the Little Eight conference tournament title.

“That was the big one, when we won the championship,” he said. “We were tied, and we won by one point against Stanley High School.”

Drumm played for Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk on scholarship and acquired a degree in Physical Education, before the Navy took him overseas during the Korean War.

When he returned, Drumm reacquainted himself with his first love – sports – and found another love, Barbara, on a dance floor in Myrtle Beach.

His affection for sports led to 20 years of competition in the Senior Games.

“Sports is a hobby for most people. But for Charlie, it’s an obsession,” said Barbara who, with Charlie, has a son, grandson and two great-grandsons. “I learned from a very young age in our marriage, that if I was going to live with this man, I can’t come between him and his sports.”

He said in all his years as an athlete, he only can recall one injury – a broken wrist, playing football in high school. When basketball season came, he played anyway.

Barbara laughs a lot when she talks about Charlie, like they’re best friends. After Korea, Charlie and his buddies would go to Myrtle Beach, to the dance halls, where shag dancing and beach music ruled. Barbara and her friends did the same, and the two became dance partners. “We became friends before he became a boyfriend,” she said. “One night, I was dancing by and Charlie grabbed my arm and pulled me into his lap, and I told my girlfriend, ‘I think he likes me!’”

They married in 1959.

Charlie saw a mention in the newspaper about Senior Games, and signed up. It became the Drumms’ ticket to travel.

“We’ve been to New Orleans and New York, New Jersey, St. Louis,” she said. “He was into all kinds of sports – basketball was just one of them. Up until a few years ago, we went all over the United States with the Senior Games.”

“I played golf, basketball, snookers, went fishing…,” Charlie said. “I guess I got about 40 medals and trophies.”

At their home in Mount Holly, the Drumms have a room for the trophies, and recently took the medals, which hang from ribbons, from the Senior Games and sorted them on the dining room table. Some are intact, some have missing labels, some bring vivid memories.

Among their finds:

* 23 medals from the Senior Games

* Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation 3-on-3 basketball tournament championship trophy, 2004

* Age-group gold medal for golf, St. Louis, 1989. The back of the medal reads “Fitness and Excellence through Competition. U.S. National Senior Olympics”

* Trophy for 2nd place team, March of Dimes golf tournament, 1989

* Age-group gold medal, Hoechst Celanese state golf tournament, 1986

* Lees-McRae alumni golf tournament, flight champion trophy, 1978

* Lees-McRae alumni golf tournament championship trophy, 1976

“There are just too many to display. We have a whole room where there’s just trophies,” Barbara said.

Charlie said he still plays a little golf. Shoots in the 70s. He even has a golf trophy from the ocean, in the early 1970s.

“We went on a cruise, and they had a recreation department on the ship and a thing that, when you hit a golf ball, it measures how far you hit it out in the water,” Barbara said. “He hit it farther than anyone.”

How far? “Hit it 270 yards,” said Charlie, who also has recorded a hole-in-one, on a par-3 at Green Meadows Golf Club in Mount Holly.

Pete DeMao, 76, is a regular at Tuckaseegee on Wednesdays. He’s been shooting hoops with Charlie Drumm for 12 years, and was on the National Senior Games team with him in 2003 in Hampton Roads, Va. There were about 35 basketball teams competing that year, he said.

“We won six in a row, and lost by two points to Pennsylvania, which was the silver medallist,” DeMao said.

On a recent Wednesday, DeMao watched from the side as Drumm grabbed a rebound, saving the ball from going out of bounds and passed to a teammate, who sank a three-pointer.

“Charlie, he’s a great guy, playing out here at 80 years old. He’s everybody’s objective,” DeMao said. “But he doesn’t have the record yet. Had two guys who played at 82.

But Charlie, he’ll pass that and be here at 83.”