Since bowling was introduced as an NSAA sport in 2003, its athletes have not been allowed to participate in leagues and tournaments during their school season. This rule also includes college showcases and scholarship tournaments held during the season.
Activities directors voted on changing this as a rule so students could participate, but the proposal failed 24-29.
The only exception for this is at the national level according to Lance Smith, Millard West’s Activity Director who was our district’s representative for the last meeting,
“Other sports also have waivers available for national events that students qualify to attend. Those waivers are currently available to bowlers as well.”
However, bowlers can go bowling for fun with a few teammates as long as nobody is coaching them.
“We can’t practice on the weekends like other sports because of lane space, so allowing leagues (especially on the weekends) finally puts our sport at the SAME competition level as all the other high school sports,” head bowling coach Brett Keim said.
This also brings up concerns for participation within the sport through the high schools, “With the limited space at bowling alleys for practice (and even competitions), allowing bowlers to participate in leagues would help grow the game, make the high school season more competitive, encourage more league bowlers to participate in the high school season while also getting high school bowlers more games to practice,” Keim said.
Throughout the school season, bowlers compete in tournament styles going against the other team in groups of 5, where every bowler can win a point and there are overall points for the team. Many however have not competed like this as it’s not common but tournaments often have a similar setup that could help bowlers become more familiar with their meets.
“The scholarship tournaments would be better received and help our athletes gain valuable tournament experience which would only help them during the high school season,.” Keim said.
It’s a possibility that this could change in the future, but the proposal would need to be changed to gain support.
“When bowling was first added as a sanctioned sport, one of the main discussion points in many of our meetings was that it would limit students’ participation in club and outside events during the season. At the time, the proponents of adding bowling were OK with that trade off. Now it seems that they did not fully understand the implications and want to carve out exceptions. I would consider supporting future proposals if they were written in a way that provided narrow exceptions with school or NSAA oversight,” Smith said.
