The Unsung Sport: Bowling

An array of bowling balls. Photo Credit: Bowling Specials & Deals | AMF River City Lanes

By: Crystal Best

Imagine this: You walk into a bowling alley expecting to be able to bowl, but instead, you see all the lanes filled with kids in different types of collared shirts, filling in the lanes from end to end. Behind them, all types of supporters take up the tables and counters, along with tall foldable chairs. The attendance person kindly tells you that for today, they are closed and will be until 4.

This is what a youth bowling tournament looks like in a bowling alley. Depending on the size of the bowling alley, also called a bowling center, they can either be completely full or sometimes have a few lanes for people to still come in and bowl, but they do make sure that there is a lane buffer or a place where no one is bowling in that area if they do that.

I have been bowling for ten years now and am a Junior Ambassador for Oklahoma State USBC (United States Bowling Congress). I won the state competition in 2021 and went to the national Junior Gold bowling tournament. Also my whole family pretty much bowls, I’ve been around it for a long time.

To the average person, bowling is simple, you grab a ball and throw it down the lane and hope it hits the pins. However, Bowling is declared a sport though many don’t believe it, and is way more complicated than the average person knows.

For Bowling, just like Football and Baseball, it requires an amount of equipment. You need bowling shoes, a certain type or types of bowling ball, a bowling bag, and any other accessories you might need.

Let’s start with the cheapest bowling equipment being the bowling shoes. The highest bowling shoe is usually around 260 dollars and though the brand doesn’t matter much, the best-known brand for quality shoes and lasting long is Dexter. The most thing that you can do fancy with a bowling shoe is how it looks. People can get a shoe that looks exactly like a normal shoe or can get a shoe that does the basic need.

The average purpose of a bowling shoe is to grip or slide. Some bowlers when they walk up want to slide either a little or a lot to add power to their bowling ball. Others don’t want as much sliding, so they get a bowling show with not as big of a sliding sole so there is more grip and stability for their arms to give the power rather than their body.

A pair of Hammer bowling shoes. Hammer is also a brand of bowling ball. Photo Credit: Hammer Bowling

Another necessary, but can be decently priced equipment is the bowling bag. A bowling bag is very simple, it holds you’re bowling ball and keeps it from going all over the place or damaging itself. You can get a simple one-ball bowling ball, which just holds one bowling ball and has one small pocket or you can go up to a bowling bag that holds four bowling balls, but with so many bowling balls there isn’t really any pocket space. The prime spot is a two or three-bowling bag with it having plenty of pockets to put your accessories like tape, brace, towel, etc.

There’s also a new recent-ish upcoming bowling bag, which is a backpack. It looks like a normal backpack but has a little holder inside so that you can put an extra bowling ball in there along with any extra stuff you might want to bring or have.

A picture of a bowling ball backpack. Photo Credit: Bowling.com

Next up might be the most underrated, complicated, and most expensive equipment, but also very necessary is the bowling ball. The bowling balls have three main features that a bowler cares about oil type, core, and weight.

The weight of the bowling balls is important. Most people think that you need a lighter weight in order to throw a bowling ball down the lane, but it’s actually the opposite. You need a heavier bowling ball that way it can carry your power along with the weight of it. It also helps with control, with a lighter bowling ball it can go more all over the place compared to one that is too heavy to where it will only go as it was made to or from how you bowled. 

This isn’t to say people don’t bowl with a lighter bowling bowl. Most have it as a spare ball, mostly used to pick up the leftover pins from the first throw or the spare pins, that way they can manipulate the bowling ball easier to hit the pins.

The bowling ball's weight goes up by two. It starts at eight and goes up to sixteen being the heaviest. Like any other sport, if you get stronger the ball will get lighter and you will have to move up in weights, sometimes up by one weight or by two depending on how strong you get.

The next thing is the oil type. Every bowling center has a type of oil pattern, they differ from each place and are created or bought by the bowling place itself, we call that the house oil. No one really knows what is a part of the house oil or what pattern they use hence why we just call it the simple name. They are known oil patterns of all different types, that range from difficulty. An oil pattern is simply how an oil is placed on the an, it can be placed in a certain shape on the lane making for dry spots or heavy spots. There is an oil pattern called the Empire State Building, which is really difficult to bowl since it starts off big and goes thinner up the lane near the pins. When you see an actual picture of it, it does look a little like an Empire State Building.

A picture of different types of oil pattern. These ones are cheetah, bear, and shark. Photo Credit: Starcards.com

An oil type for a bowling ball is how it reacts to how much oil there is on the lane. There are bowling balls for light, medium, and heavy oil. Usually how a bowling ball reacts to the oil type sometimes has to deal with the outside of the bowling ball. Sometimes a bowler may need multiple different types of bowling balls to deal with different oil types or lanes.

The next most essential part of a bowling ball is the core. The core is the reason a ball either hooks or not and how much pin action it can do on the lane. There are many different types of alterations of cores, but they all spur from three main ones; Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, and Pancake.

A picture of the different cores minus the look of the pancake core. Photo Credit: Bowlers Paradise

In simple terms, Symmetrical offers a predictable motion for the ball, almost like no matter how much you throw it off what you wanted, it will do the same thing or turn. Asymmetrical is for a more powerful hook or curve of the ball, but that does mean it can be harder to control. Pancake is a smooth easier to control ball almost symmetrical, but probably more effort is needed than the symmetrical one (bowlinginthismonth.com).

A fun fact is that bowling balls can be infused with a smell for example I have a bowling ball that smells like cupcakes. The smell can be put into its core so that it’s supposed to activate from the oil going in and the smell coming out. It is a weird complicated method, but the results are satisfying.

Another thing that is a separate price and skill in its own right is drilling the ball. Most bowlers go to a certain person or a certain shop where they like to drill their ball. This is because it’s important how a person drills a bowler’s ball, this will affect how the bowler has to throw the ball or how the ball can hook like it’s supposed to. Another thing drilling can do is about how aggressive or not aggressive it can make your bowling ball. There are other little things like fingertips, measuring your hand, and other attributes that aren’t as important but are a part of the process.

Another thing that bowlers have is accessories like the brace, resin bags, powder, tape, etc. I would explain how bowlers used all the different accessories, but there are literally way too many to go in-depth or truly explain how they work for bowlers, especially one with multiple uses.

So I’ll do the two most common accessories that the average bowler has which are a towel and tape.

A towel is used to wipe off the bowling ball from oil that comes off the lane which depending on how much oil is built up onto the ball can affect how it hooks or moves on the lane. It also can clean off the gunk that comes onto the ball from going the machine or when it gets stuck back there and is constantly turning put either more oil or gunk on it.

Another one that a lot of bowlers use is tape. This is one of the accessories with many uses. Some put it on the inside of the fingers so that they can slip out of the ball more easily without their fingers getting stuck in it. Some put it inside the ball that way they don’t have to keep using tape to do it. I personally put tape on my thumb to make sure, one that it doesn’t rub off my nail polish, a girl’s got to be a girl, and two so that my thumb doesn’t get stuck in the bowling ball.

These are all just some of the things that bowlers need or want to buy in order to better their skills. 

Another important aspect of bowling other than just the normal league is tournaments. Especially for youth bowlers who can start getting scholarship money at the youngest age of six or whenever they start bowling in tournaments.

Tournaments are huge, they are sometimes the reason people even get into bowling, especially for adults who can win hundreds of dollars from entering a tournament though for them there is a chance of coming out with nothing.

This isn’t the same for youth though. No matter what standing you come in, you get even just a little bit of money for trying to compete. Then first, second, and third get a bigger amount of scholarship money than others making the competition spirit still there. 

In youth bowling, all divisions are divided by age and then by gender. There are three different types of events which are teams, usually a group of four or three, doubles, and singles. The doubles and teams can be mixed. There’s also one called All Events where a bowler does all of them and they take their scores from all the games going against another bowler almost bracket style. This applies to adult bowling tournaments except that they're not being divided by ages.

Another factor in bowling tournaments is whether a bowler is going to do handicap or scratch. Handicap is where it involves you’re average. Depending on your average will depend on how much handicap you get, which is essentially extra pins on top of what you already scored. If you get over you’re average even just a little bit, it could be golden for you.

A bowler gets their average from the league on what they normally score every week which means that can increase or decrease every week. There are also some leagues though that do what we call a sport shot, which takes one of those harder oil patterns and uses them instead of the house oil. This affects the bowler’s average since if they can do decently in the pro sport it’s expected that they do better on house raising their average when they go to certain tournaments.

The difference between a sport shot and a house shot. As seen the sports shot is a little more complicated than a house shot as you see by the darker blue representing more oil. Photo Credit: Wiki.

The other one is scratch. This is where you’re average doesn’t do much help at all. It simply goes off the score you get, without giving you any extra pins or things on the side. Bowl high, possibly get a high standing.

Most tournaments require a bowler to pick either scratch or handicap or even both. There are also specific tournaments, like the big one, the Pepsi tournament, which is a straight scratch tournament with no handicap offered at all.

There’s a whole Junior gold tournament that takes place, that also gives a lot of scholarships, and takes bowlers from all across the country to compete in what is around a week to two-week competition. There are also colleges scouting for potential students to join their school’s bowling team, offering scholarships for that too. 

Even with all these scholarship opportunities, youth bowling is slowly dying.

“We have had a decline in the past few years of youth membership within our state while our adult membership has held steady and even increased in some areas. I feel this can be attributed to so many activities being available for our youth and the demand on our entertainment dollar, parents have to make a choice and sometimes bowling will lose out,” said Mark Ellis, the President of the Oklahoma State USBC.

Even with these facts, Mark Ellis still has faith that bowling will continue to prosper in Oklahoma for the foreseeable future.

“I believe bowling is in a good position in the state of Oklahoma and will continue to be a great choice for adults and youth alike. I will always end any announcements I make with a reminder of what our sport is all about: Good luck, good bowling, and have a great time,” said Ellis.

Since I’ve been bowling for so long, I’ve seen firsthand how this sport has grown over the years. How slowly the uniform changed in the league and how they battled COVID while still trying to keep tournaments and other events going.

People still don’t understand what a person means when they say that their sport is bowling. That when a bowler does three games, they’ve walked three miles. The average tournament ranges from four to nine games, meaning you can walk up to nine miles in one day. Doing all of this while also holding a weight and throwing it down the lane.

Most don’t know that there is a high school league that is just as big, with Jenks, Union, and even Broken Arrow having a team.

It’s a chill sport while still being competitive. It’s not just a strength game as it’s also a mental game on trying to figure out where to put your bowling ball and how you throw it down the lane.

It’s a sport that can be just a fun thing to do or you take it a little bit seriously and get some scholarship money that goes untouched by a lot of people.

So go give it a try at a bowling alley near you. Make new friends if you want and just have fun. Like Ellis said earlier “Good luck, good bowling, and have fun.”

You can join any league at a local bowling alley or just join any high school bowling team by showing up.