Elks give young bowlers a shot at the pins
Seven-year-old EJ gets ready to hurl his ball down the lane at Lake Bowl Friday, as part of the Moses Lake Elks Lodge’s bowling camp.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Elks Lodge finished its bowling camp Friday with whoops of joy intermingling with the thrum of bowling balls and the crash of pins.
“The kids got to go at the end of September and get a little instruction, and then they got measured for bowling balls, and then they got to play,” said Moses Elks Lodge Exalted Ruler Debbie Doran-Martinez.
The former Elks Lodge, which folded several years ago, used to hold a golf camp for kids, but with school in session, that wasn’t very feasible, Doran-Martinez said. Instead, the Elks partnered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Columbia Basin to bring the kids from its Longview Elementary clubhouse to Lake Bowl. Besides getting to bowl a game, each child took home their own bowling ball and bag, donated by Lake Bowl. The first game was held Sept. 28; Friday was the second and final.
The lodge plans to continue the camp next year, Doran-Martinez said, with a different Boys & Girls Club clubhouse.
Between 30 and 40 kids came to the bowling camp, Doran-Martinez said, which meant the few volunteers who came with the Elks had their hands full. For Saturday’s bowling, wrestlers and basketball players from Big Bend Community College came to lend a hand.
“We needed (the athletes) to keep the kids focused and remind them, only one person in a bowling lane at a time and you have to shoot two balls and that kind of stuff,” Doran-Martinez said. “And then also when the instruction was done, teaching them how to enter their names on the monitors to they could see their name up on the screen. So we had plenty of big kids to help the little kids.”
To make the bowling fairer, the BBCC volunteers had a handicap; they had to bowl with their nondominant hand and couldn’t use bumpers when competing with the club kids.
“It’s got to be fun for the little kids to root against them,” said Kim Pope, a member of the Elks Lodge and former executive director of the Boys & Girls Club. “The kids have such a good time, and some of them have never bowled before, and then having the Big Bend kids come out here has been awesome.”