The president of Bowl U Rick Benoit joins us to his thoughts on bowling, and his vision for Bowl U. Rick shares his opinion on how to improve our sport, and where we need to focus our energy. Rick also takes to task the term “sport shot”, and why it is not good for bowling. Check out Bowl U here, and follow them on Twitter here. In part two of our interview with Rick we focus on coaching, and what to expect at Bowl U.
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I don’t understand the point of this. You want to let the Recreation part of bowling to stay the same? Then why bother coaching? I see plenty of bowlers walk into a center, rent shoes, pick a ball off the rack and shoot over 200 no problem. Why teach a skill to the Recreational bowlers at all? Kinda goes against what you are talking about. League on the House Shot takes NO SKILL. Teaching people HOW to bowl only leads to those bowlers becoming frustrated when they try to apply what they have learned and it doesn’t work. You can teach everything in the world to someone, but have them bowl on a pair with 7 other people throwing all over the place and those “skills” become null and void. That “skilled” bowler will make every spare and be unable to carry a double while so “Unskilled” bowler will carry every shot that touches the headpin and shoot 50 pins over their average (plus have a ton a handicap to boot).
Your approach would only work if EVERYONE cared about bowling. You are teaching the MINORITY with BowlU. You will never change the game with the path you are going on. My hat is off to you for trying! I think you are going to make a bunch of the Majority into the Minority and then they will have no where to compete with their new found skills. That equals frustration and less league retention. Sorry.
Sounds like a few years of frustration Matthew. You should check BowlU out and find out more information because what you are saying is just the opposite of what our goals are. Recreation is a part of every sport and If the sport of bowling does not identify itself differently than recreation there will always be conflict. My suggestion is to simply avoid telling bowlers they are bad, that does nobody any good. Instead of telling 2 million bowlers they are bad. Why not offer something new, that will satisfy the need for separation of skills. That way you are not telling anybody they are bad and those that want to truly challenge their skills will have that opportunity. The new challenge must be obvious to the un-knowledgeable fan, provide more excitement to everybody, and more value to potential sponsors. This gives us a fresh opportunity instead of trying to fight among ourselves. There are many reasons this makes sense but certainly offers you an opportunity for another challenge.
Coaching is the marketing arm of bowling that encourages those who choose to follow the competitive challenge. If we do a good job of separating recreational bowling and competitive challenges there would be no need to debate the difference. Invisible challenges will never work because the un-knowledgeable viewer will never invest the amount of time necessary to understand the difference. The concern you have for not identifying the difference between the recreational bowler and the more challenging levels is real but it needs to be more obvious to be effective.
Rick
As I understand his presentation, I believe Rick is on to something- a valid understanding on how people really learn and most important how to learn how to learn and ultimately how to think. Once a basic skill set is learned so the bowler can advanced off of the basic skill set, the PLAYER must learn the concepts (knowledge)and how to functionally apply those concepts (skill). If one goes to a traditional camp and learns to do the instructors prescribe world view and applied skills then the only thing learned is a robotic understanding of that given world view particular skill (s) but if one learns a broad skill set(s) and learns how and when to apply the particulars of the diversity of possible choices than one can think and do, Rick is on the right track.
How is one telling bowlers they are bad? What is new that is being offered?
Rick I appreciate what you are doing and 100% behind your vision.with out visionaries like you are sport will die thank you.