Team Members: Katie Staunton, Katy Rever, Meghan Calhoun, Kristy Rever. Jodie Beausoleil. Coaches: Gord Staunton, Pauline Brabant
While bowling is usually viewed as an individual sport, these five girls personified the word “team,” says Gord Staunton who, along with Pauline Brabant, coached them to the YBC Junior Girls Five-Pin Bowling Canadian Championships in 2001.
Representing Bayshore Lanes, the girls had to survive the gruelling Youth Bowling Council Four Steps to Stardom – and they did.
First, they each had to make the team by qualifying through an eight-game house round. Then, they had to bowl against nine other teams to win their zone in a five-game competition. They did that resoundingly, beating the second-place team by a whopping 979 pins.
The third step was the provincial round in Ottawa, where they took on 15 other zones, including major centres such as Toronto, Ottawa, and Kitchener-Waterloo. There the girls bowled a total of 4,981, smashing the provincial record of 4,797.
The final challenge was to defeat seven other provinces in the national round in Calgary, bowling three games against each province, a total of 21 games over three days. That com- petition ended in a three-way tie between Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec. A one-game tiebreaker ended in victory for our girls.
“This team of girls was most deserving of this title as they were a dedicated and hard-work-ing group of young athletes,” Staunton said in nominating the team for induction into the Midland Sports Hall of Fame. “With every step of this tournament, they spend many hours practicing and meshing together as a team. When one or two were struggling, the oth- ers would pull them up. They were never hard on each other and they always had fun.
“These girls have become role models for other young bowlers in the community by showing them that if you set your goals and try your best to achieve them, that they too could someday represent their bowling centre and their community in the most important tournament known to all youth bowling members — The Four Steps to Stardom.”
