Born to Bowl: How to Raise a Champion

Mary and Ron Grijalva could write a how-to book based on their grown daughter, Tennelle: “Tips For Raising a Championship Bowler.”

First: Mothers, take up the sport seriously while you’re pregnant with the prospective champ. Stay in the game right through your eighth month, like Mary did. It helps if the doctor who delivers the baby also bowls in your church league.

Then, when your budding bowler turns 3, take a part-time job as a short-order cook at your neighborhood bowling center, such as Brunswick Orange Bowl in the Grijalvas’ hometown. Let your toddler loose on the lanes where you can watch her, and make sure to praise her uncanny ability to keep the ball out of the gutter.

As your winner blossoms, dads, drive her to tournaments all over the state in your mobile home, as Ron did on countless weekends. This routine requires stamina, driving overnight while your player sleeps, then cheering her on during daytime games.

Now, proud parents, when your baby grows up to compete as a professional, be prepared to make lightning trips out of state to catch her anticipated victories.

Then let the tears flow and tenderly hug your daughter after she wins the U.S. Open in her rookie year, just like Tennelle did in a surprise victory last month in Phoenix.

Voila! You have a world-class bowling champ at age 23.

“You wanna see her in action?” asks her burly father, planted firmly in his living room chair when I visited this week. “Throw me that remote, honey.”

Tennelle handed her father the control. The victory tape was ready to roll in the entertainment center, adorned with reminders of his family’s Native American roots--a drum, a tomahawk, a bow and arrow.

His daughter’s enormous glass trophy sits on a stereo speaker in the corner, with ceremonial feathers draped on the wall behind it.

For what must have been the umpteenth time, Ron screened the game that crowned a lifetime of family devotion to the sport. See, that’s he and Mary in the audience watching their girl throw strike after strike with utter calm and concentration.

“She’s so easygoing,” says an announcer of the player nicknamed Ten-Ten. “She’s a very personable young lady, and you can see it in her bowling.”

Right. Just don’t talk to Tennelle when she’s in a slump. She’s a perfectionist, hard on herself when she misses that spare. She gets quiet. A frown appears on her freckled face.

She says her family never pressured her to play or win. She was born with that desire. Now, she doesn’t want to let them down.

Life on the pro bowling circuit can be less than glamorous. Tennelle travels in her new Ford Aerostar, with 20 bowling balls and no assistant. She makes her own reservations and covers her own costs for hotels and meals. It’s all drive, bowl, eat, sleep, and drive some more.

If she fails to crack the top 32 spots in a tournament, she doesn’t get a dime in prize money. That’s what happened to the champ on the road a couple of weeks ago, a plunge from her peak win of $35,000 at the U.S. Open.

“OK, you are human,” joked a friend.

Tennelle didn’t laugh.

“I don’t like calling home with bad news,” she said.

‘You Always Knew Where She Was’

Grijalva is a surname with a long history in Orange County. The extended family traces its roots to the first Spanish explorers to trek through this area. But Ron’s branch is much more interested in bowling than genealogy.

Ron and Mary played in local leagues, and so did their kids. Tennelle, the youngest, always wanted to play like her sister, Delania, seven years her senior. But while sis started a family, Ten-Ten became a star bowler.

Tennelle’s friends didn’t understand why she could never go to the movies, or just hang out. She even missed her senior prom, class of 1995 at Orange High, because of an out-of-town tournament. That girl was always bowling, and she has the burn marks and calluses on her short fingers to prove it.

“But you always knew where she was,” said her smiling mom, the former Mary Jimenez.

As an amateur and member of the Olympics’ Team USA, Tennelle won a gold medal last year at the Pan American games in Canada, and a bronze at the world championship in the United Arab Emirates. (“We got killed by the Korean team.”)

But in Canada, Tennelle didn’t stay for the closing ceremonies. She rushed home and went straight to the hospital bed of her friend and mentor, Jim Lee of Riverside, who was dying of cancer at age 33. She showed off her medal and he begrudgingly approved.

Lee, once a pro himself, thought Tennelle was too good to be an amateur. He always urged her to go pro, repeating his pet proverb: “You know, you can’t buy steak with gold medals.”

Tennelle said she felt Lee’s spiritual presence at the U.S. Open, with a ghostly breath in her ear. Last week, on the first anniversary of his death, she placed photos of her victory at his grave site.

This year, the young champion is on her way to a six-figure income from prize earnings. She used her Phoenix winnings to pay off bills, buy a new couch and help finance her upcoming wedding to longtime fellow bowler Jason Milligan.

Physically, they make a bit of an odd couple. Jason is tall, thin and gangly. Tennelle stands 5 foot 4 (with a little fudging) and weighs, she says, “too much.”

But that’s what’s great about this sport, say the Grijalvas in chorus: “Bowling is for everybody.” Fat, skinny, blind, disabled. “It doesn’t matter. You can still bowl,” said Mary, so emotional about this concept she taps her chest over her heart.

For this family, bowling is also a community affair. The doctor who delivered Tennelle played with the league at Holy Family Catholic Church, a block from the modest home where the Grijalvas have lived for 30 years.

The Orange Bowl on Tustin Street, where Mary worked the snack bar, was like their second home. Fellow workers were all baby sitters and coaches. When Tennelle turned 21, she returned to buy a drink from Yolanda, the bartender they call Yo.

“Any time I go in there, I have such good memories,” Mary said.

The family was greeted warmly when we stopped by Wednesday night. Rose, the coordinator for seniors, gave Mary a hug. Sue, the youth director, remembered how she cried when “my Tennelle” won the U.S. Open.

Nick, the mechanic, took full credit as he shot past us. “I taught her how to bowl,” he shouted. “Put my name in there.”

Tennelle is getting ready for her fall swing, a 10-week tour that starts in Florida next week and winds up in Las Vegas. Her father, who once played semi-pro football with the old Southern California Rhinos, would be with her the whole way if he could.

But Tennelle teased him: “You can’t come to my place of work.”

“Sometimes he drives me crazy,” she confided. “Even when I play bad, he claps. . . . He’s ready to be my roommate and my chauffeur for the rest of our lives. That would make him happy.”

Her teasing rolls right off the big guy, retired now after 33 years with the same company, driving one of those big dirt scoopers. His parents never saw him play as a kid, said Ron, who still works part-time as an usher at Edison Field. He vowed he’d be different with his children, he told me as we observed his daughter practice.

After throwing 11 strikes in a row during one game, Tennelle scooted by us and joked, “You getting bored watching strikes?”

No way.

“I could watch her bowl all night,” her father said softly.

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com