Early 2000s. Brunswick Zone. Quartermania. Twenty-five cent games. Twenty-five cent shoes. That was the start of bowling for me.
Paying My Own Way
I grew up lower middle class. Broken family. Dodging and adjusting to shifting priorities. If I wanted to do what my friends were doing, I paid for it myself. So I started working at 14, slinging fries under the golden arches, just to keep up and have the same fun I watched my friends having.
Bowling was one of those fun moments. Hours worked on the weekend meant dozens of games on weekdays with friends. We were just kids, having fun, getting “good,” and dreaming of doing more with the sport.
Humbled Fast, Hooked Faster
Then we joined a youth league. Got humbled fast, and hooked even faster. House balls. House shoes. We knew that wasn’t going to cut it.
It took what felt like hundreds of hours of work to save up for my first ball, a Hammer Black Widow. The original. (I’m still looking for another one to put on the office wall someday.) Neither my parents nor I could afford bowling shoes, so house shoes it was.
Saturday morning league and tournaments alike, I bowled in house shoes against kids who seemed to have it all. They never had to guess what was in their bag, let alone whether they could show up. Meanwhile, I was learning to balance time off work against how many hours I needed for the next dose of fun.
The “What If”
That shaped me in many ways. I took a lot of that pain and used it to fuel the man I’ve become. But it also left a deep, lasting cut of “what if.”
What if I’d had the same coaching, the same equipment, the same access?
Why the Youth Development Fund Exists
When SPARE/WARE was born, I knew it had to stand for something. It had to solve for something most people overlooked, the same way it was overlooked for me.
That gap is the reason the Youth Development Fund exists.
A portion of every SPARE/WARE sale goes toward covering the basics for kids who want in on this sport but are stuck outside. A ball. A pair of shoes. An entry fee. Whatever the actual barrier is. Not scholarships for future pros. Just enough for a kid to show up and bowl.
What Growing the Sport Looks Like
Most of these kids won’t go pro. They might not even bowl in college. Most will be league bowlers who found something they love and kept coming back to it. That’s the win.
That’s what growing the sport actually looks like. Not a handful of tour stops, but a community of people who never stopped showing up.
If gear is the only thing standing between a kid and a lane, that shouldn’t be the reason they walk away. I know, because it almost was for me.
Keep reading: Bowling Built Community First · Landmark Lanes and funding bowling’s growth
