Rolling their way to medals
Special Olympians earn team bronze, two individual silvers in Calgary
Special Olympics in the Niagara region was well-represented on the medal podium after the last pin fell in 5-pin bowling at the 2024 Special Olympics Winter Games last week in Calgary.
A five-member team, all of whom are from Welland and practise and play out of Jeff’s Bowl-O-Rama, won a bronze medal, including two — Precious Nugent and Jeremy Walsh — who each earned a silver medal based on their individual averages coming into the four-day competition.
“I think it’s fantastic. Whenever you go to nationals and can come back with a medal, it’s quite an achievement,” said Tim Dixon who, along with fellow coach Kim Bartlett, accompanied the team to Alberta for the quadrennial event.
The Niagara contingent, which also included bowlers Wesley Ker, Josh Steinhoff and Alexander Stewart, left Ontario on a Monday and didn’t fly home until the following Sunday. They spent the first day in Calgary practising before playing four games each day over the next three days.
Dixon said the competition attracted 5-pin teams from across Canada, with the most coming from Ontario and British Columbia.
“Teams are guaranteed 12 games,” said Dixon, who also took a team to Thunder Bay where the games were held four years ago.
Usually, bowlers qualify for the
Special Olympics Winter Games by competing at regional and provincial playdowns during each fouryear cycle. That wasn’t the case this time, however.
“There weren’t provincials because of the pandemic,” Dixon said.
He said regionals are usually held in Welland because “we have 16 lanes and it’s usually two shifts, so it’s all of Niagara.”
Dixon, a master bowler who competes in the Niagara Five Pin Mixed Pro League, also coaches in the Youth Bowl Canada (YBC) program in addition to teaching the sport to Special Olympians.
When the Welland native first started coaching Special Olympians “many moons ago, we maybe had 40 athletes, maybe 35.”
‘‘ Whenever you go to nationals and can come back with a medal, it’s quite an achievement.
TIM DIXON COACH
“Now, it’s all to way up to 100.” The retired steel industry employee, now 71, became involved in Special Olympics because he has two sons — Ryan, 43; James, 40 — who are “special-needs boys.”
While both bowl, Ryan has competed at provincials as well as nationals.
“Ryan is a much higher-average bowler and he bowls in the pro league with me as well.”
Dixon, a 5-pin bowling hall of famer, speaks from the experience of “40-some-odd years of coaching in the YBC program” when he says there’s a big difference between coaching YBC and Special Olympians.
“You can take that bunch of kids and put them together and pretty well they will all understand. If you took a team of five bowlers and worked with them, they pretty well could understand everything you were saying,” he said. “With Special Olympians, you can’t do that.
“You have to take each one individually and work with them because they just don’t get it.
“We have to learn a different way of helping them to achieve their goals on a one-to-one level.
“It is so different.”