By Stephen Hunt
Raymond Cage has always been competitive. Growing up in Vidalia, Louisiana, a city of 4,200 in central Louisiana on the Mississippi River, he played football. During his eight years in the United States Air Force (USAF), Cage boxed for three years. And it was while in the Air Force, specifically stationed at San Antonio’s Randolph Air Force Base, that he met his wife of 28 years, Angela, an Alamo City native, on a blind date.
Cage left the military and worked in corporate America for 20 years before retiring in spring 2023. He enjoyed racing his nieces and nephews and coaching their three children in baseball, football, soccer, and track. However, Raymond still longed to compete. In 2021, he watched track and field events during the Tokyo Summer Olympics and wondered what competitions existed for senior competitors.
And as he and Angela, Frisco residents since 2000, attended Frisco Freedom Fest to enjoy some fireworks, he popped a different sort of question – one: did she think he could compete in senior-level track, and two: would she, someone who ran track for four years in high school, be his coach?
“My track team in high school was canceled during my freshman year, so I didn’t get the opportunity to run track,” he recalled. “So, this was my chance, now 35 years later, to try track. I was a football player – I had a different running style. Angela worked with me on my technique. She showed me how to do starts out of the blocks. We had a different meal plan to lose some weight to get into shape and then different stretching exercises to not pull hamstrings.”
Angela Cage had never coached before but had worked as an elementary school teacher for many years in San Antonio, Plano, and Frisco, where their three children attended school and graduated from, and Carrollton Farmers Branch, a district she retired from in May 2023. “Being a teacher is very similar to coaching, so it just came naturally,” she said. “I told him initially, if you want to do this, we’re going to do this for real. You have to listen to what I say, and you have to do what I say. He’s a good student, and he pays attention. A lot of things he didn’t have any clue about.”
While Angela did ample research on formulating the perfect training regimen for Raymond, including nutrition, stretching, and how best to tweak his running style, Raymond researched what times he would need in his two events, the 50-meter dash and the 100-meter dash, to determine if he could make a serious go of this. After training extensively on tracks at several Frisco schools, including Pearson Middle School, Raymond felt he was ready, so the Cages’ first trip was to the 2021 Kansas Senior Games in the state capital of Topeka, where Raymond competed in the 50-meter dash.
“Angela being a serious coach, her thing was if we’re driving seven hours [to Topeka] for [you to run for] seven seconds, you better win. So, no pressure, right? She felt like I wasn’t ready for the 100-meter dash yet, so we signed up for the 50-meter,” Raymond said. “We drove seven hours, and I came in second at 6.9 seconds.”
Following his success in Kansas, Raymond competed in the Oklahoma Senior Games the following week and then in October 2021, the Texas Senior Games, where he finished first. That victory qualified him for the 2022 National Senior Games in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he finished fifth in the 50 and sixth in the 100.
In 2022, Cage placed first in the Mississippi Senior Games in Gulfport and delivered another first-place showing in the 50 and 100 at the Texas Senior Games in San Antonio, a performance that qualified him for the 2023 National Senior Games in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Normally, the National Senior Games are held in odd-numbered years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the normal schedule off, so the games were scheduled for back-to-back years in 2022 and 2023. The next National Senior Games are slated for 2025 in Des Moines, Iowa, and Raymond plans on being there, especially after finishing third in the 50 and sixth in the 100 in Pittsburgh in 2023.
However, that strong showing at the ‘23 nationals largely resulted from some tough love and great coaching from Angela. Raymond had struggled in the preliminary round of the 50-meter dash and barely qualified for the top eight to reach the finals. So, on his own, he changed his stance out of the starting blocks.
His ever-vigilant wife and coach, who was sitting in the stands with her sister as Raymond warmed up, immediately took notice and sprung into action. “At the 11th hour, he’s going to try to make a change in his start? I can tell from his start if he’s going to have a good race or not, and I knew that [change] wasn’t going [to work],” Angela said. “I was like, ‘What are you doing? Why would you change it at this date?’ We’ve come too far, literally and figuratively, to not do your best and what I know you can do.”
Raymond immediately saw the error of his ways, returning to his original starting stance, and the results speak for themselves. “I was overthinking it. She let me have it,” he admitted. “At that point, she was 100 percent coach. She read me the riot act. I did five test runs in front of her, and she said that’s what I need you to do. Within 10 minutes, I’m in my heat ready to go, and I finished third in the nation. That was nice. I feel like if I had not listened to her, I wouldn’t have this medal. To me, that was a testament [of what a great coach she is]. I’ve always followed her lead when it comes to this track stuff.”
As of October 2023, Raymond has competed in six different states and earned 15 medals.
As the youngest of 10 children, Raymond’s family members come out and support his competitive endeavors whenever possible. His family was especially present when he competed in the 2022 Louisiana State Games. The Cages’ children, Raymond Jr., 34, a Frisco Centennial High School graduate who is in the Air Force and lives in Belgium, Jazmine, 34, also a Centennial graduate who lives in the Frisco area, and Corvellas, 32, a Frisco Liberty graduate who lives near Atlanta, also routinely attend his events.
Another frequent attendee is Angela’s sister, Regina, a physical therapist for over three decades who lives in the Houston suburb of Katy and takes photos at the events in which Raymond competes. The Cages also frequently receive support from their neighbors at Frisco Lakes, both when training and competing at various events.
“Here in Frisco Lakes, they have totally embraced Angela and me,” Raymond said. “We train at the amenity center, do our weightlifting, and we’re out on the court doing drills and they’ll say ‘go coach!’ They’re more excited about her, saying ‘go coach, keep him running.’ It’s fun being part of that. We love Frisco.”
After competing and winning two Gold Medals in the Dallas Golden Games in September 2023 at the Greenhill School in Addison, where the Cages had 35 friends and family cheering them on, Raymond is taking a well-needed break from competition for the next few months. “Yeah, I’m in the off-season right now. I wanted to continue, and she [Angela] said you’ve got to give your body a chance to rest,” Raymond said. “I took her advice. I’m in the off-season. Probably for my next meet, I’ll start back in March or April of ‘24, that’ll be qualifying at the Texas Senior Games in San Antonio.”
“[I told him] you’re not 15-years-old, you’re 54,” Angela said. “You have to work hard and then take some time to let your body recover because you could get injured, and you can’t recover from an injury as quickly as you could 35 years ago.”
Among the events on his schedule for 2024 are the National Veteran Golden Age Games, an event exclusively for military veterans put on by the Veteran’s Administration which will be next August in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Pan American Games, which are set for July 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. One big change for 2024 is that the Cages could then be traveling to competitions in an RV, which they are currently exploring buying.
However, no matter where they compete, track is not only a labor of love for Raymond as a competitor and Angela as his coach, but these events also further their love of travel and provide opportunities for them to reconnect with friends they’ve made in the track community while continuing to fuel the strong competitive fire which still burns inside them both. “A lot of our friends say we inspire them; we’re an inspiration. Some of them want to come out and do it,” Raymond said. “They’re excited about us, and they always wish us well.”
Any local businesses interested in sponsoring the Cages’ trips to various senior track competitions, expenses which Raymond and Angela pay out of their own pocket, can contact Raymond at raymondcage@att.net.
By Stephen Hunt
Raymond Cage has always been competitive. Growing up in Vidalia, Louisiana, a city of 4,200 in central Louisiana on the Mississippi River, he played football. During his eight years in the United States Air Force (USAF), Cage boxed for three years. And it was while in the Air Force, specifically stationed at San Antonio’s Randolph Air Force Base, that he met his wife of 28 years, Angela, an Alamo City native, on a blind date.
Cage left the military and worked in corporate America for 20 years before retiring in spring 2023. He enjoyed racing his nieces and nephews and coaching their three children in baseball, football, soccer, and track. However, Raymond still longed to compete. In 2021, he watched track and field events during the Tokyo Summer Olympics and wondered what competitions existed for senior competitors.
And as he and Angela, Frisco residents since 2000, attended Frisco Freedom Fest to enjoy some fireworks, he popped a different sort of question – one: did she think he could compete in senior-level track, and two: would she, someone who ran track for four years in high school, be his coach?
“My track team in high school was canceled during my freshman year, so I didn’t get the opportunity to run track,” he recalled. “So, this was my chance, now 35 years later, to try track. I was a football player – I had a different running style. Angela worked with me on my technique. She showed me how to do starts out of the blocks. We had a different meal plan to lose some weight to get into shape and then different stretching exercises to not pull hamstrings.”
Angela Cage had never coached before but had worked as an elementary school teacher for many years in San Antonio, Plano, and Frisco, where their three children attended school and graduated from, and Carrollton Farmers Branch, a district she retired from in May 2023. “Being a teacher is very similar to coaching, so it just came naturally,” she said. “I told him initially, if you want to do this, we’re going to do this for real. You have to listen to what I say, and you have to do what I say. He’s a good student, and he pays attention. A lot of things he didn’t have any clue about.”
While Angela did ample research on formulating the perfect training regimen for Raymond, including nutrition, stretching, and how best to tweak his running style, Raymond researched what times he would need in his two events, the 50-meter dash and the 100-meter dash, to determine if he could make a serious go of this. After training extensively on tracks at several Frisco schools, including Pearson Middle School, Raymond felt he was ready, so the Cages’ first trip was to the 2021 Kansas Senior Games in the state capital of Topeka, where Raymond competed in the 50-meter dash.
“Angela being a serious coach, her thing was if we’re driving seven hours [to Topeka] for [you to run for] seven seconds, you better win. So, no pressure, right? She felt like I wasn’t ready for the 100-meter dash yet, so we signed up for the 50-meter,” Raymond said. “We drove seven hours, and I came in second at 6.9 seconds.”
Following his success in Kansas, Raymond competed in the Oklahoma Senior Games the following week and then in October 2021, the Texas Senior Games, where he finished first. That victory qualified him for the 2022 National Senior Games in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he finished fifth in the 50 and sixth in the 100.
In 2022, Cage placed first in the Mississippi Senior Games in Gulfport and delivered another first-place showing in the 50 and 100 at the Texas Senior Games in San Antonio, a performance that qualified him for the 2023 National Senior Games in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Normally, the National Senior Games are held in odd-numbered years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the normal schedule off, so the games were scheduled for back-to-back years in 2022 and 2023. The next National Senior Games are slated for 2025 in Des Moines, Iowa, and Raymond plans on being there, especially after finishing third in the 50 and sixth in the 100 in Pittsburgh in 2023.
However, that strong showing at the ‘23 nationals largely resulted from some tough love and great coaching from Angela. Raymond had struggled in the preliminary round of the 50-meter dash and barely qualified for the top eight to reach the finals. So, on his own, he changed his stance out of the starting blocks.
His ever-vigilant wife and coach, who was sitting in the stands with her sister as Raymond warmed up, immediately took notice and sprung into action. “At the 11th hour, he’s going to try to make a change in his start? I can tell from his start if he’s going to have a good race or not, and I knew that [change] wasn’t going [to work],” Angela said. “I was like, ‘What are you doing? Why would you change it at this date?’ We’ve come too far, literally and figuratively, to not do your best and what I know you can do.”
Raymond immediately saw the error of his ways, returning to his original starting stance, and the results speak for themselves. “I was overthinking it. She let me have it,” he admitted. “At that point, she was 100 percent coach. She read me the riot act. I did five test runs in front of her, and she said that’s what I need you to do. Within 10 minutes, I’m in my heat ready to go, and I finished third in the nation. That was nice. I feel like if I had not listened to her, I wouldn’t have this medal. To me, that was a testament [of what a great coach she is]. I’ve always followed her lead when it comes to this track stuff.”
As of October 2023, Raymond has competed in six different states and earned 15 medals.
As the youngest of 10 children, Raymond’s family members come out and support his competitive endeavors whenever possible. His family was especially present when he competed in the 2022 Louisiana State Games. The Cages’ children, Raymond Jr., 34, a Frisco Centennial High School graduate who is in the Air Force and lives in Belgium, Jazmine, 34, also a Centennial graduate who lives in the Frisco area, and Corvellas, 32, a Frisco Liberty graduate who lives near Atlanta, also routinely attend his events.
Another frequent attendee is Angela’s sister, Regina, a physical therapist for over three decades who lives in the Houston suburb of Katy and takes photos at the events in which Raymond competes. The Cages also frequently receive support from their neighbors at Frisco Lakes, both when training and competing at various events.
“Here in Frisco Lakes, they have totally embraced Angela and me,” Raymond said. “We train at the amenity center, do our weightlifting, and we’re out on the court doing drills and they’ll say ‘go coach!’ They’re more excited about her, saying ‘go coach, keep him running.’ It’s fun being part of that. We love Frisco.”
After competing and winning two Gold Medals in the Dallas Golden Games in September 2023 at the Greenhill School in Addison, where the Cages had 35 friends and family cheering them on, Raymond is taking a well-needed break from competition for the next few months. “Yeah, I’m in the off-season right now. I wanted to continue, and she [Angela] said you’ve got to give your body a chance to rest,” Raymond said. “I took her advice. I’m in the off-season. Probably for my next meet, I’ll start back in March or April of ‘24, that’ll be qualifying at the Texas Senior Games in San Antonio.”
“[I told him] you’re not 15-years-old, you’re 54,” Angela said. “You have to work hard and then take some time to let your body recover because you could get injured, and you can’t recover from an injury as quickly as you could 35 years ago.”
Among the events on his schedule for 2024 are the National Veteran Golden Age Games, an event exclusively for military veterans put on by the Veteran’s Administration which will be next August in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Pan American Games, which are set for July 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. One big change for 2024 is that the Cages could then be traveling to competitions in an RV, which they are currently exploring buying.
However, no matter where they compete, track is not only a labor of love for Raymond as a competitor and Angela as his coach, but these events also further their love of travel and provide opportunities for them to reconnect with friends they’ve made in the track community while continuing to fuel the strong competitive fire which still burns inside them both. “A lot of our friends say we inspire them; we’re an inspiration. Some of them want to come out and do it,” Raymond said. “They’re excited about us, and they always wish us well.”
Any local businesses interested in sponsoring the Cages’ trips to various senior track competitions, expenses which Raymond and Angela pay out of their own pocket, can contact Raymond at raymondcage@att.net.
