MISSION ORIENTED
Early 2000’s. Brunswick Zone. Quartermania. Twenty-five cent games. Twenty-five cent shoes. That was the start of bowling for me.
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 years old, slinging fries for the golden arches. Just to try and keep up and have the same fun I witnessed my friends having.
Bowling was one of those fun moments. Hours spent working on the weekend meant dozens of games played on the weekdays with friends. We we’re just kids, having fun, getting “good” and dreaming of doing more with the sport.
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 me, 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) My parents nor could I afford afford my bowling shoes, so house shoes it was.
Saturday morning league and tournaments alike, I bowled in house shoes against kids who seemingly had it all. Never had to guess about what was in their bag, let alone if they could even show up. Meanwhile, I was learning to balance taking time off of work and how many hours did I need to work for the next dose of fun.
That shaped me in many ways. I took a lot of that pain and used it to fuel the man I have become today. But it also left a very deep, lasting, cut of “what if”… “What if I had the same coaching, the same equipment, the same access?”
So when SPARE/WARE was born, I knew it had to stand for something. To solve for something most others overlooked with me.
That gap is the reason the Youth Development Fund exists.
A portion of proceeds from 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.
Most of these kids won't go pro. They might not even bowl in college. Most will just 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.