Bowling Philosophy-April 2010

Un-a"dore"ing
by Thomas Scherrer

It is sometimes sad to see Rome fall, in particular when the rise to power never fully reached its potential. As a curator of bowling from a participatory and philosophical standpoint, it is important to see things as objectively as possible, despite what your head and heart tells you. This tell tale heart version surrounds the end to the Vanderbilt Commodores 2009-10 Women's Bowling season: a season that resulted in 67 wins against arguably, the nation's toughest schedule. The season ended with a rather distraught 5th place finish, losing to eventual national runner-up Nebraska in the double-elimination bracket system. It also ended the stellar and somewhat on-the-fence career of Josie Earnest, who has virtually been the face of this program for 3 underachieving years. This, however should not be about Earnest (at least not at this time because there are many who felt that Earnest needed to validate her collegiate career with another national championship) or anyone participating on the team during this transitional year. The truth is, Vanderbilt has all the talent and ability that you need in college bowling to win, however something has always been missing since the 2007 season.

I always kind of weep with some sense of nostalgia about the 2006-07 team that won the school's first and still only national championship. I watched a young group of gals embrace team first fundamentals, a strong sense of character for such young ladies, as well as a dominant Baker bowling team, which is the backbone for all of college bowling. Not just because my girlfriend of almost 4 years, Michelle Peloquin was on the team, but it was a greater sense of things that went beyond bowling. That team transcended statistics, or who led a tournament (3 people won at least one All-Events title that season) in average, or who bowled where. I saw them as the definition of a team: mostly 7 girls coming together for a perfect storm to make school history. What was so great about this was that they had the blueprint plus another two years together to possibly make history. It never happened...in fact, the team that resembled the 2006-07 team slipped further and further into oblivion. Some blamed it solely on the growing egos of Tara Kane and Karen Grygiel, who were not talented enough to assume trying to assume leadership roles, thus creating a team divide. Some would go on record as saying that there was some hyper-jealousy concerning Earnest's media attention, which did border on nauseating but can you blame Vanderbilt for trying to put the machine behind Earnest? You had a marketable, young star on the rise. You needed an engaging face to help build the program and brand for the future and her individual accomplishments certainly lived up to the requirements. However the team aspect always seemed to fall short. This is not an indictment of the bowler or the person Josie Kaye Earnest, but as the face of Vanderbilt's bowling team, Earnest never got the team back to the promised land.

Then some would look at the coach...

When Head Coach John Williamson was asked about this current 2009-10 team in comparison to the 2006-07 team, Williamson was very pleased about his current squad's togetherness, despite not winning a second championship:

“I’ve told this team several times over the past couple of weeks that this is the first group of individuals that I would call a team. They bought into what we were doing and the direction we were going, and they all bought in. Over the last couple of years, I couldn’t say that we were 100 percent bought in. Last year when we were eliminated by Central Missouri, we just sort of fell apart. We didn’t end on a strong note today against Nebraska, but we certainly didn’t fall apart. We struggled, but we threw good shots and sometimes pins just didn’t fall. This year we bought in as a team..."

But Williamson had one final statement in regards to the 2007 championship team:

"...In 2007, it was pretty much an aberration. We caught lightning in a bottle and ran with it.”

Yes folks, you heard it correctly: the head coach of the school's only national championship just buried its history by calling that championship season an aberration. I will be the first to admit that I did not see the 2009-10 team bowl at all this season and by no means, do I feel that what Williamson said about this current team is not anything but honest and sincere. However, as someone who did watch the 2006-07 team and saw it actually win (which, if we are being blunt, is the idea, right? To win??), I am surprised by this statement as well as upset by it. Surprised that Williamson publicly said this because he basically denounced the 2007 team as lucky or not buying into the team concept, despite winning the national championship. I feel as if you can feel that way about a previous team, but to say it publicly? For all that it is worth, Williamson figuratively just took the 2007 trophy, snuck it out of the athletic center, laid it down on the school's 50-yard line, doused it in kerosene, and lit it on fire. Is that too harsh of a statement to make? Let's delve into the statement further (the upsetting part): to call the 2007 title season an aberration is to say that the effort put forth by the players to embrace the team concept was less than adequate, but let's not stop there. Williamson's aberration statement should be upsetting to not just the players who put the work in to win it, but also the parents, grandparents, siblings, relatives, friends, boyfriends that sacrificed their weekends to travel, to cheer, and to support their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, sisters, and girlfriends on.

Ultimately, this is what should scare you about Williamson's statement: he still fails to grasp what bowling is at its essence, which is a mom and pop type sport. Bowling at its most intricate, organic state is game that takes an entire village to raise a bowling child, which is not that foreign to that of a hockey child growing up: it takes everyone to make it work. Bowling and hockey share some strange parallels for parents as it does for kids: a sport that has a majority of its events in the fall and winter. Regionally speaking, the weather for these sports are more cold-weather. Parents of both sports will wake up at 5am to warm up the car or minivan with the weather below freezing, get the kids ready with their equipment, drive sometimes 4 or 5 hours so their kids can bowl or skate in a weekend tournament, giving up maybe a day of work or two, standing and cheering their kids on and then driving them back home after one or two days of competition so they can get home, finish their homework, and get ready to do it all again the next weekend. These sports are devoid of AAU or sleep-away camps. There are no scouts watching and recruiting young boys or girls in 9th grade to come to their university, nor is it being televised on ESPN. Nothing is comped or paid for by sponsors: you pay your own entry fees and hotel rooms and for food and gas. Then, all that dedication by the parents for their children pays off with NCAA taking care of their kids, yet they still pay their way to attend via hotel rooms, dinners, gas, and tolls just to see that the sacrifice was all worth it. In these sports, winning takes a concerted team effort, no matter what the circumstances are. So, for Williamson to call the 2007 season an aberration is a slap in the face to anyone that was a part of it. Anyone who had any investment in that 2007 championship season and felt like they helped contribute to it and with one afterthought statement by the team's head coach, it urinated on everyone's investment.

Funnily enough, I don't see Williamson giving the trophy to Maryland-Eastern Shore-the team they defeated-because it was "an aberration" or donating part of his salary back to Vanderbilt for "catching lightning in a bottle". I don't see those things happening by a very nice guy. In speaking with Coach Williamson, he is a nice, engaging, sneaky funny person. When I went down to Vanderbilt a few times to visit Michelle, he would let me join in their practices to help out in some doubles matches. He is not a bad guy at all, but to be fair, I have never felt that he was a good fit for a bowling coach. A simple reason is that John Williamson has never bowled competitively in a league or a tournament before. He has made the strides to understand the game, being a USBC Silver Level Coach however, Williamson knows little as to what goes into the psyche of being a bowler or understanding what they are seeing in a sport where the main opponents (lane conditioner and pins) are both invisible and indifferent sometimes. The comments about calling the 2007 season an aberration are unfair to both his program's past as well as its future. Taken at face value, that 2007 season is a byproduct of the players he has now. These new recruits have come to Vanderbilt not only to gain a very solid education (which should never be overlooked) but to be a part of the legacy that players like Peloquin, Earnest, Kane, Grygiel, Ashley Belden, Kaitlin Reynolds, and Mandy Keily helped formulate prior to them should not be overlooked. I do hope for Vanderbilt's sake that the run is not over: NCAA bowling needs them to be a powerhouse program as a means to help promote women's college bowling to the big conferences as maybe a sport they can take up, giving bowling a much needed boost for the next generation of aspiring young bowlers that are still driving in the backseat of their parent's minivan at 6am to go bowl because it is all about the love of the game. And I hope for Coach Williamson, he remembers the past of his program and embraces it for the future.

Fill Ball: I found (as referred to by Michelle) Williamson's statement on the New Jersey City University athletic page, as they were presenting coverage of the 2010 NCAA championships. Ira Thor, the Director of Sports Information at NJCU, did a tremendous job presenting up to the minute stats and scores of the tournament as well as question and answer features each day with some of the teams. However...I did not find Williamson's statement on Vanderbilt's athletic page during coverage of the tournament. In fact, if you didn't know any better, the comments Williamson made didn't event exist!

That omission should not go unnoticed. If you are an elite program, you owe it to your fans and player's friends and family as much coverage and access to the team as possible, as well as presenting all the relevant information. In fairness to Vanderbilt, they had a link to NJCU's website on each article during the 2010 NCAA Championship so perhaps, they can be given a little slack. If anyone clicked on the link and did enough investigative reporting, you could find the comment. With that being said however, a statement such as what Williamson said should be brought into the proper context. It could not nor should not go unnoticed by people who access the vucommodores.com website to get their info on the women's bowling team. This might be more nit picking or some might go as far to say, "piling on" Vanderbilt, but it is worth bringing up as a means of objective writing, for which in this instance, was very difficult.


Thomas Scherrer is back working in a bowling alley, as well as a USBC Level One Certified Coach. Bowling Philosophy is my blog dedicated to understanding the nature of the sport of bowling and what we all can do to improve the game we love.