The members of Brattleboro's senior bowling league talk a humble game. But the personal bowling balls and shoes they show up to bowl with tell a different story.
Robert Rigby’s bowling ball says “radical” on it in big yellow letters. He’s 77, lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and bowls an average of about 200.
“I come north of the border every time to bowl,” he said.
Rigby is president of the weekly league, which meets every Thursday morning.
“The first rule of this league is you're here to socialize and have fun,” he said. “Bowling is the excuse and the reason you’re here.”
If it is really an excuse to get together, it’s one that members have embraced wholeheartedly. While most Brattleboro Bowl leagues stop in the summer, the senior league plays all year round.
By the way, “senior” is a generous term, here — you just have to be over 50 to play. (The alley’s owner just became eligible to play last year.)
Nancy Dalzell, 79, lives in Westminster and is the league’s secretary. She puts together the weekly roundup for a local paper.
And this Thursday, she’s on an all-women's team called the “Four Queens.”
“We’re just out to have fun, so it's not a lot of pressure,” she said. “The only pressure there is the pressure we put on ourselves.”
Which, for the record, Dalzell does. She’s been bowling since she was 10, and these days she comes to the lanes three days a week.
“I always want to do better,” she said.
Not everyone is putting so much pressure on themselves.
“I bowl terribly and I enjoy it,” said 65-year-old Duane Schillemat.
Schillemat joined after he learned that someone at his church plays.
“There was a gentleman that was almost 100 years old. And I decided that if he could bowl, I might be able to do it,” he said.
Bowling is a lifelong sport, said Rigby, the league president.
“It’s not unlike golf,” he said. “You can do it for life.”
Dick Cook is 85 and started bowling in 1960, in the officers club overseas. He and his wife both bowl in the senior league.
“I think you get attuned to coming in on Thursday morning. It becomes a routine, like going to work,” he said. “When somebody’s missing, you ask what’s going on, because it’s like family.”
There’s some down time built in between turns — just enough that players are actually waging a concurrent poker game at a table right behind the lanes.
And when they’re not throwing balls or picking up cards, they’re catching up. Cook said they talk about all sorts of things when they’re waiting for their turn, like how their games are going or their families — just not politics.
Dalzell said they talk a lot about what they did when they were younger.
“Of course, we talk about that a lot,” she said, laughing.
Today, Dalzell’s playing a really great game. But she’s not resting on her laurels.
I ask her what it feels like to roll a strike.
“It feels like you've done what you were supposed to do,” she said. “And then you have to think, ‘Oh, but I have to remember how I threw that ball so I can do it again.’ Because consistency is the name of the game.”
