Bowling is one of the oldest sports in existence. Yet even today it thrives and can be played by practically everyone with different skill levels. For some, there is the thrill of local competition. For the elite few, it is a professional full-time sport carrying with it prize money, prestige and the chance to have your name written in the history books.\nFor the rest of us, those who couldn't name a pro bowler even if we tripped over those history books, bowling is simply a way to have fun with friends. \nBowling's appeal rises dramatically in the winter months, when students home from school with nothing else to do go out in droves to one of the few places in town that's open late and welcomes those that aren't 21. \nJunior Ryan Plummer and senior Jessica Fifer work the desk at the Back Alley, the lanes in the Indiana Memorial Union. Both being on the bowling team, it comes as no surprise that they are bowling advocates. But they give solid reasons for the advance of the sport.\nAnd like Plummer said, in January, it's too cold to do much else.\n"As it gets colder, it gets pretty busy here in the winter," he said. "You can't go outside."\nAside from the environmental advantages to staying warm, Fifer and Plummer believe bowling offers fun for people at every skill level.\n"It's a sport you can be terrible at and still have fun," Plummer said.\nFifer chuckled as she concurred. "It's only as serious as you make it."\n"You're not the only person who'll be bad at it," Plummer added.\nPeoples' collective lack of bowling skill may also account for the fact that bowling remains a popular activity for dates. Since everyone around you will be bad at it, impressing your date with that perfect 300 will be the last thing on your mind. \n"It's definitely a good ice breaker," Plummer said. "It lightens the mood."\nBut for some bowlers, like eight- year-old Ellie Sare, she isn't thinking about getting a 300 game. Or impressing a date. She bowls at Classic Lanes Saturday morning and has an average of 82, but her aspirations are simple: "I want to beat my brother!" She bowls in a league for fun, but being a typical Hoosier, her goals are to become a basketball player. \nTwenty-one year-old Jody Galyan is involved in the game for yet dif
ferent reasons. Galyan, an Army National Guardsman, has bowled for 10-12 years. He's also a little better than the bowlers-out-on-dates -- his average is 181 and his best game is 299 in practice. For Galyan, bowling is a way to step away from the world and the Iraq crisis. \n"It gives me a night to forget everything and socialize," he said. "There is no political speak on Monday nights." \nGalyan currently bowls in local tournaments and in a Monday night league, where he can match up against bowlers from similar skill levels. At league nights, dating is optional.\nIU alum Lee Johnson is what one might call an elite bowler. Johnson is a bona fide Professional Bowlers Association card holder taking a year off touring to teach his sport at the Back Alley and Suburban Lanes on north Walnut Avenue. Johnson, a former IU team captain, said his level of bowling involves a combination of actual skill and a working knowledge of physics.\n"We take things such as the weather, surface, oil pattern, temperature and humidity into account, as well as if the lanes might be slightly sloped up or downhill," Johnson said. "Most people don't understand the physics behind bowling, but if you are going to be competitive, you have to."\nJohnson has also bowled somewhere between 40 and 50 perfect 300 games, his first coming at the age of 15.\nSince no one else on the planet other than a PBA cardholder will ever be able to bowl those kinds of numbers, IU's department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation offers many sections of the bowling class. Plummer and Fifer, in addition to working at the Back Alley, also teach some of the classes there. The one-credit classes are so popular people sit on waitlists for months.\n"There are people who retake the class," Fifer said. "I know people who've taken it two or three times because it's so much fun."\nEven if you're not in the class and are uneducated about the sport altogether, the very nature of bowling makes it a social activity. People bowl in groups so they can laugh at each other's mistakes. \nAnd the yards and yards of wooden lane can get repetitive without friends around to do something stupid.\n"When there's four or five other guys bowling with me, that makes it exciting," Plummer said.
