My mom had the great idea of signing the boys up for bowling at the end of last summer. I am so jaded by our past experience in organized sports that I had to think it over and then think about it some more before I took a deep breath and showed up with my boys and mom for sign up day. I'm sure I have not written on here the horror of our past experiences with soccer, baseball, karate, gymnastics, basketball (I'd like to forget), tennis (I cringe) and dear Lord I can't dismiss the jitterbug incident. It took all that for me to seriously hesitate at any other sport. I'm a slow learner. Tennis had been the only one that stuck with Dane as a real interest until bowling. I'm still waiting on Dylan's interest to ignite a motivation of good behavior.
I was surprised to hear that the bowling league wasn't a two month sport like every other activity. We were making an eight month commitment to give up our Saturday mornings. The boys took to it well and enjoyed it so much that they had to have their own ball. Their Aunt Jeannie bought the balls for them as Christmas gifts which was nice since it kept their interest in the sport through the second half of the season.
The boys actually got better at bowling during the season and Dane scored his high score of 134 at a tournament. Dylan even scored an 83 as his high score. Dane tried hard at being consistent and ended up having a three game streak scoring in the 90's each of the three games. He was very hard on himself when he wasn't doing well. He got lots of practice at pushing through disappointment and not giving up. Dylan missed several weeks just because I couldn't take the humiliation of his meltdowns anymore. He had trouble with the noise and stress of the game a lot of the time. He does much better if we are playing on our own instead of a full facility playing at once. I got lots of practice in chocking on my pride.
This past Saturday was our big end of the season party. Randy and I bowled with the boys and they received medals. Dane had placed fourth in the tournament he played in so he didn't get a trophy. The boys' team, Rolling Thunder, placed 5th in the league out of eight teams. We were actually surprised they did that well! My brother-in-law, Ray, sponsored the State Tournament tee shirts so the league organizer had a special framed recognition for him that all the players signed. We go to Little Rock at the end of the month for Dane to play in the state tournament (he'll be wearing the Northwest Motorsports sponsored shirt there). I look at all of this as character building and not stress the importance of winning an award. Now, with academics, that's a different story. Its kind of a joke around here.
So, with the exception of our pending Little Rock tournament we are done with bowling for a while. I suspect the kids will want to sign up again in the fall.
