Youth Bowling Organizer Says Toughest Thing Is Luring Them Indoors

When you consider the obstacles Dee Ruddy faces when she organizes youth bowling leagues, a 7-10 split looks easy.

Ruddy, 55, manager of a Palos Verdes bowling center, has spent the past 28 years coaxing youngsters to take up bowling. While that may not seem terribly difficult, her task takes on added significance when you look at what she is up against. Baseball, for example.

Ruddy’s youth bowling leagues begin and end at about the same time as Little League baseball. Butting heads with the national pastime is not the most enviable endeavor, as she will tell you.

And then, there is soccer. Again, it is a hard sell for Ruddy to lure kids indoors when they could be spending a good part of their summer running up and down grass fields.

But Ruddy, an avid bowler and recognized as a pioneer in youth bowling, has accomplished the seemingly improbable. She has managed to sway scores of youngsters away from the ball fields and beaches and into the bowling alley.

The work of the Torrance grandmother has paid off. On June 4, the Southern California Bowling Writers Assn. bestowed on Ruddy the Norm Meyers Memorial Award, named for the late professional and awarded to those who have made a lasting impact on bowling.

Hers has been a long and tedious effort, but one, she said, that was worth it.

“I started working at Palos Verdes Bowl in 1960,” she said, “and we didn’t have any kids’ leagues. So I started forming junior leagues.”

It didn’t help, Ruddy said, that the area lacked an association for youth bowlers.

She took care of that, too. She entered youths into the America Junior Bowling Congress, now known as the Young American Bowling Alliance. Locally, Ruddy and her colleagues began the Southeast District Youth Bowling Assn.

In early June, more than 400 bowlers gathered at a banquet as 10 youngsters and Ruddy were entered into the Southeast District Hall of Fame.

Young bowlers are not breaking down bowling alley doors, however, and Ruddy admitted that recruiting juniors is difficult.

“You have to go out and get them,” she said. “They just don’t walk in. You have to get on the phone or get something in the newspapers. You have to encourage it through the adults bowling at your center.

“They don’t just walk in here, because there are too many other activities in Southern California. The weather is perfect.”

If getting kids inside isn’t easy, Ruddy said, imagine trying to keep them there.

“You have to have instructors and have them stay with the kids,” she said. “You can’t just dump the kid out there and walk off.”

Young bowlers have a tendency to lose interest in what initially is a difficult sport, especially if there is no encouragement. Ruddy tackles the problem two ways.

First, when a youngster joins a league, Ruddy offers two weeks of free instruction, and then the instructors stay with kids while they finish league play.

“If the kids do not learn anything, they won’t want to keep bowling,” she said. “If they don’t get better, it’s discouraging.

“It’s like going to school and getting all Fs. You’re not happy and you’re not going to learn.”

Second, for younger bowlers, smaller and lighter balls are used as well as gutter bumpers, devices that keep balls on the lanes and out of the gutters.

“We only use bumper bowling for the little ones,” she said.

Junior bowlers, Ruddy said, are those under 21. She said she has had bowlers as young as 3 but does not encourage children so young unless they are big.

“They’ve got to be able to handle the ball, at least hold it with two hands and roll it down,” she said. Six is the ideal age for beginners, Ruddy said.

In some leagues, children bowl on one side of the building while their parents bowl on the other.

Ruddy no longer bowls. She maintained a 176 average before a knee injury forced her to stop. But her daughter, 33, and granddaughter, 16, both bowl.

Ruddy could bowl again, she said, if she had surgery on her knee. But, for now, she seems quite content acting as an ambassador.