Guest Guesser | After 56 years trying, it's time for a big win

Finally, the Sorenson family broke through in a Seattle Times contest.

Mary Sorenson, 83, has been playing the Times' Guest Guesser football prediction game for 56 years. She won for the first time in Week 4 of this season, and now has added the big prize, a trip for two to the Super Bowl.

Sorenson beat 12 other competitors in the championship round of the contest, picking 16 of 20 winners last weekend.

When she told her son Shawn, the oldest of her three children, that she had won, he reminded her of another Times contest.

"He said, 'Well, The Times owes it to us. Do you remember when I was in the finals of Old Woody?' " she said. "Do I remember it? I'm still scarred from it."

Old Woodenface was a baseball pitching contest sponsored by The Times from 1919-1968, with kids trying to throw the ball through a strike zone cut into a wooden sign. Apparently, Shawn took the loss hard.

"He even remembers the name of the kid who beat him," Mary Sorenson said.

As for her run of 56 years before finally winning?

"It just goes to show you," she said. "Never give up."

Sorenson, who was 19 of 20 on her winning weekly entry, missed four college games last weekend, but was 10 for 10 on NFL games. Bill Melter and Mike Davenny tied for second, each missing five games. They each missed the same four college games as Sorenson, but also missed on the Arizona-Cincinnati NFL game.

Sorenson said she thought she'd blown it this week by incorrectly picking Washington State to beat Oregon State.

"I was kicking myself all over the place for that one," she said. "How could I? I went with my heart over my head. I knew better."

Sorenson has ties to the Cougars and Huskies. She met her late husband Jim in Pullman, where he later graduated from WSU. They were married in 1948 and lived in Pullman until 1951, when they moved to Seattle and began playing Guest Guesser.

Sorenson, who worked for 30 years as a nurse at the student health center on the University of Washington campus, said her kids kept asking her if she was sure she won when she told them.

"I told them, 'Do you think I'd be calling if I wasn't?' " she said. "But I think they figure, after 83 years, and all these years of doing this, I must know something.

"I'm sure I'm the first 83-year-old woman who's won it."

And probably the first mother of an Old Woody finalist, as well.