Youth bowling season isn’t over yet

By Kathryn Menue
Editor
BELVIDERE – Some people think that sports are overly competitive, filled with too much violence, and are unsafe due to the risk of serious injury.
However, sports offer more than just physical activity. Sure, sports are great for exercise, but sports also hold other benefits as well: teamwork, accountability, sportsmanship, ingenuity, and dedication just to name a few.
Teamwork
When people participate in sports they need to be team oriented. They are not only representing themselves, they are representing their entire team every time they play. E
ven in bowling leagues, like the youth bowling league offered every week at Concordia Lanes at 1205 Logan Ave. in Belvidere, bowlers are not only bowling to attain a high score for themselves, but for their whole entire team.
They are playing with their team to make sure the whole team succeeds. Teammates can give support and tips to help improve each bowler to their full potential.
Accountability
Obviously, when people are in an organized sport, they are accountable to be on time and represent their team when needed. The youth bowling league in Belvidere teaches children accountability by having a designated time each week where bowlers are expected to show up and give it their all.
Sportsmanship
Sometimes the game doesn’t always go your way. Sometimes you may not agree with a call or the play didn’t go as planned. Sometimes you will lose or your total wasn’t as high as your previous game. That is one of the life lessons in sports: bounce back from it. Be a good sport.
Life, like sports, doesn’t always go as planned, but you move forward.
For instance, in the youth bowling league, bowlers face other teams and someone always wins and someone always loses. This is life. The children who compete in this league learn to deal with the disappointment of a loss and how to be a gracious winner through the sport.
Ingenuity
Part of life is being able to adapt. Change happens all the time and we need to make sure we can cope with the day to day occurrences that life throws at us. Sports are a great way to teach how to adapt with the changes in life.
In sports, a game could be going poorly with the other team being better, more experienced and so on. However, if a team or a single player even adapts and looks for the other team’s weaknesses, they could take the game back.
The youth bowling league teaches children these skills. More often than not, when you’re not warmed up enough, the first ball thrown is a gutter ball. Players may be panic stricken that the game is already over before it even really started since the other team started with a strike.
Yet, if the player adapts their technique and really studies the pins for each frame, the bowler can come back and still win the game.
Even youth bowlers find this in games and changeup their game to finish stronger than they started.
Dedication
Watching star players dominate the game makes the game seem easy, but their star sportsmanship doesn’t always come naturally. To become an excellent player, athletes train and practice for hours at a time to improve their skill level. They are dedicated to their craft so they can be the best that they can be.
In the youth bowling league, multiple players show their dedication by competing every week and improving their bowling skills. Top bowlers make the high scorers list, some of whom make it multiple weeks in a row.
This week, those bowlers include seven bowlers out of the four age categories.
In the Cookies and Milk league, Noel Capadanno scored high with a 75.
In the Bantams category, Brooklynn Wilkinson scored a 107 with a 182 series and Draivin Wright scored an 85 game with a 140 series.
In the Preps division, Matt Turnipseed had a high game of 136 and Branndon Fowler had a high series of 361.
In the Junior/Majors league, Morgan Dawley scored a 182 game with a 459 series and Kevin Jenks scored a 184 game with a 482 series.