ouch!  i guess it would hurt!  i wish you had had somebody coaching you who
knew how to help you.

in my senior year of high school, i had a boyfriend (fiance who i didn't
marry, obviously<smile>) who never bowled under a 180 game.  he originally
taught me to bowl.  we both loved it so much that the night of our senior
prom the four of us (two couples) went bowling in our gowns and tuxedoes.
my own average back then was around 170+ with a personal high game of 297.

when i married butch, i didn't know that he loved bowling too.  i probably
didn't ask cuz i hadn't bowled since my wreck and was held together by metal
and knew there were more surgeries ahead of me.

when alex was 5, i suggested we put alex into pee wee league.  turned out
the stinker loved it too (and then butch joined a men's league).  rocky, the
owner of the lanes, watched me coach alex each week (unbeknownst to me) and
after awhile asked if i wanted to coach the rest of the kids to bowl.

i told rocky i'd love to be able to, but couldn't bowl anymore because of my
injuries and stuff.  i knew he could see i had a bad limp.  he said he could
tell by what i was having alex do that i used to bowl and had been probably
a decent bowler.  but he floored me when he said he didn't believe i
couldn't bowl anymore.  one day, rocky took me aside after kids' leagues and
fitted me with a ten pound ball off the rack.  told me to go for it, to see
if he could help me make adjustments to accommodate my body damage.  it took
several games of mostly gutter balls, my backup ball was then fierce--a
severe backwards hook, before rocky found the right spot for me to stand,
retaught me a new 3 step approach (instead of my old 5) the right spot for
me to throw over and the right position for my hand and elbow, so i wouldn't
hurt myself and worked on my timing.  then, my first real game after that
was just over a 100.  that was all i needed to start getting me consistant.
i was getting better consistantly at around 120 when rocky decided that what
was holding me back was that i was using balls that were too light and not
drilled for my needs.

next thing i knew, rocky fitted me with an old 15 pound alley ball (which i
thought i'd kill myself with.LOL).  he filled the finger holes, drilled it
for my righthandedness, but drilled it so that it was weighted for a
lefthanded bowler, to compensate for my bad reverse hook.  that ball got my
average to 140--the national average for women---(mainly because he let me
practice all i wanted to for 25 cents a line, when leagues weren't bowling.
i'd bowl anywhere from 12 to 20 games in a row, almost everyday, from the
first time he worked with me until i got my average up.)  then rocky asked
me again if i wanted to coach.  said i'd love to give it a shot, because i
then felt i could "show and not just tell" kids what to do. (by then butch's
schedule was such that he was free on weekends and butch wanted to coach
kids.)

so, then rocky sent us both to YABBA university on weekends.LOL  yep,
bowling school for coaches.<smile>  we both learned stuff we already knew
about the game, but better than that, we learned how to coach kids with all
kinds of disabilities.  who knew there were bolsters for the gutters for
blind people?  who knew people in wheelchairs could bowl?  and people on
crutches?  and we also learned to teach downs kids, add kids, kids with all
kinds of disabilities.  learned about all kinds of hand and arm braces
(ankle and knee braces too) and bowling gloves to help kids bowl.  how to
tell if a kid's ball was too light or too heavy.  how to spot back problems
in kids and help them adjust for that.  how to spot weak joints and what to
do to compensate.  how to tell if the fit of the ball was wrong for a kids
hand and lots of other stuff.  we even learned how to teach kids to sit down
on the lanes and just push the ball properly over the right spot to hit
pins.

with my average finally at national women's levels, i bought a new ball, had
rocky fit and drill it for me and i joined a woman's league and coached kids
for over ten years.  it was fun knowing your disabilities didn't have to
stop you from bowling.  when i hit my first 200 game (after my wreck and
because of rocky's help and encouragement), rocky had a special trophy made
for me.  not a league trophy, even though i bowled it on league.  it was
waay sweet.  "secoma lanes' favorite most improved bowler '88" and he and
his wife gave it to me in private.  i still boohoo when i think about it.
there were other trophies for league bowling---getting those kinds of things
in public always embarrassed me.  i didn't keep them.  actually, i recycled
them for the kids, by having new brass plates engraved for them.  but i kept
that one even though it somehow got broken.

kate