Time stands still when Luke “Ollie” Legendre is bowling.
Towering over one of the dozens of ball returns at All Star Lanes, the retired plant worker flops a green towel absently in his hands before hefting one of his two bowling balls off the rack.
He moves to the head of the lane, focused. Tall and slim but a little stooped at the shoulders, he steps smoothly into his approach—no wasted movement—and finishes by pulling his left hand high overhead in a follow-through that’s second-nature to this twice-a-week bowler.
Thump, rumble. The ball starts out curving toward the left gutter, but then catches itself and hooks toward the pins—specifically, the pocket between the No. 1 and No. 2 pins. Clash-clang, clickety-clack, clack, clack.
Strike.
His head still stooped, Legendre returns to his fellow bowlers, gently fiving all the low, extended hands of teammates and opponents alike in a universal ritual that acknowledges a good roll and tries to sop up a little mojo.
Legendre’s 91-year-old eyes then meet mine. An impish smile flashes across his face, and his eyes twinkle. I’m looking at a boy, a New ’Awlins kid hanging out at Fazzio’s Lanes downtown right after World War II, rolling strikes and wondering what he’s going to do with his life.
If this weekday senior bowling league has an elder, it is Legendre, who’s 26 years into retirement. Most are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Just about all of them started bowling back when there were 12,000 bowling centers in America; today there are a third that many, all stuffed with flashy video arcades, lounges and birthday party rooms to keep the crowds coming.
Several lanes over from Legendre’s league, a group of young men on a Christmas outing sponsored by an employer are bowling fast and furious.
They are fit, strong men in their late teens and 20s, most of them African-American, all of them full of laughter and confidence. They talk loud and they bowl hard. The balls roar down the lanes and strike pins with sharp, clattering smashes.
These young men are in their prime. And if they tried to compete against the grayer, slower-moving men and women a few lanes over, they’d get stomped.
For all the ferocity of their throws, they score in the 90s and low 100s. The seniors are racking up 150s, 180s, and a few around 200.
“I did my best bowling when I was about 64,” Legendre recalls. “And I bowled a 289 on lanes 63 and 64 when I was 89.”
It seems such a simple task: roll the ball; knock the pins down. Yet within this basic, all-American challenge lies an infinite pursuit of perfection, a whole world of technique, discipline and potential for improvement.
Bowling is a rare lifetime sport—where else but at your local bowling center might you find old fogeys kicking the butts of swaggering youngsters?
Bowling’s heyday evokes greased-back hair, hot rods and drive-in movies, but the pastime is staging a comeback thanks to the rapid growth of high-school bowling.
A decade ago, when a pilot program was introduced, only 30 Louisiana high schools had bowling teams. Today, 70 schools field 120 teams with some 1,000 varsity bowlers, says Rickey Bourgeois, commissioner of the state’s high-school bowling program and senior vice president of Malco Theaters, where he runs bowling centers in Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Bourgeois is proud to point out that more than a dozen graduates have won college bowling scholarships as the number of NCAA bowling teams climbs.
“High-school bowling is growing,” Bourgeois says.
Technology is helping grow the sport as well. Automated scoring has attracted more people to the sport, and now families can have more fun bowling together with the advent of gutter bumpers that automatically deploy when it’s a young child’s turn to bowl. “Nobody likes to bowl zeroes,” Bourgeois says.
Kent Lowe, an assistant to LSU’s athletic director and Baton Rouge’s preeminent authority on bowling, says high-school bowling is the great hope of the sport’s future in Louisiana. Lowe credits Bourgeois with spreading its popularity among kids.
Another great motivator—cash—is also having an impact. This summer’s Teen Master’s tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, will present a $64,000 scholarship to the winner.
Gonzales is poised to get a new bowling center. Bourgeois is developing Ascension Lanes, a 26-lane center on Airline Highway at La. 44. The center will include six boutique-style lanes, which are spaced farther apart and feature wide-screen TVs and comfy seating for groups or families. Ascension Bowling is slated to open in the fall, and longer-term plans call for adding a multi-screen movie theater.
Beginning this month, 60,000 bowlers from all over the United States and beyond will make a pilgrimage to Baton Rouge’s River Center to compete in the sport’s largest tournament, the U.S. Bowling Congress. A state-of-the-art 48-lane bowling center has been installed. There will be dozens of vendors selling all manner of bowling gear, equipment and clothes.
At any given time 1,000 bowlers and their families and friends will be bowling at the River Center and making their way around Baton Rouge restaurants, bars and shops. It’s estimated the event will have a $75 million to $100 million economic impact on the city.
But after the lanes are packed up and the competitors have all gone home, it’ll be bowling as usual in Baton Rouge. And the future will be left to young guys like 22-year-old Brett Vann to continue the tradition.
Vann took up the sport at Catholic High, where he competed on the varsity bowling squad. Today, he works at All Star Lanes and bowls in league play. He’s not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he knows bowling will be part of it.
“Bowling is misunderstood,” Vann says. “If you just watch bowling on TV, you probably don’t really understand what they’re trying to do. There’s so much to it. Every pin left standing tells you something about what you did, and so you keep working to improve.”
