Mario's Bowling & Family Entertainment Palace (MBFEP) is hoping to entice more children to look at bowling as not just an entertaining past time, but as a possible means to furthering their education. The staff visited a number of schools prior to the Christmas break to hand out more than $20,000 in free bowling passes to students at both private and government primary schools.
Every year during each bowling season, there is more than $6,000,000 in scholarship money offered by bowling associations, councils, certified tournaments and proprietors throughout the United States, providing a good opportunity for students to secure scholarships for schooling, said Lisa Humes, sales and marketing manager at MBFEP.
"High school students can win a four-year scholarship, as bowling is a NCAA certified sport, the same as track and field, basketball and football. However, each year the bowling facility [MBFEP] has to turn down scholarships because of a lack of interest in the sport of bowling. Many persons view bowling as a recreational activity when, in actual fact, it is a sport earning persons millions of dollars in sponsorship and prize money each year," said Humes. "Our hope is to get the young ones bitten with the bowling bug at a tender age so that when they do arrive at the decision to attend college, bowling will become a viable option with regards to securing a scholarship to attend college."
According to collegescholarships.org, there are 43 NCAA, Division I and Division II schools that offer women's bowling and only two schools that offer scholarship bowling for men, although there are many men's college bowling teams.
At the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) level, there are competitive athletic programs in the association, so worthy bowlers can pursue educational opportunities at participating NJCAA schools.
In the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), bowling is unrecognized as a "championship sport". In spite of the NAIA designation, a number of good bowling programs operate within the NAIA school system.
There are 24 NJCAA schools that have bowling teams. NJCAA Division III and NCAA Division III schools do not award athletic scholarship. There are six NCAA Division III schools that offer women's bowling, also without scholarship opportunities for athletes. To lure good bowlers to their teams, coaches at Division III schools use academic scholarships and other incentives.
State-of-the-art facilities, and the promise of high levels of competitive success bring athletes to smaller programs, especially when academic scholarships offset tuition expenses.
"The love and gratitude from the children and teachers when we presented over 200 free bowling passes filled everyone's hearts with hope and encouragement," said Leslia Miller-Brice, director of marketing, Mario's Bowling & Family Entertainment Palace. "We look forward to having the kids come in to redeem their passes, to enjoy a game of bowling with their families with the hope that they will catch the bowling bug. In fact we would like to see bowling added to the school's physical education curriculum. The promotion is designed by the marketing team at Mario's in an effort to keep the young people in our nation on a positive path, in an attempt to gain awareness on the sport of bowling and its benefits, while having fun."
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