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300 Game Boosts Bowler's Reputation
By Jason Lieser
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The first time he met Ryan Lingholm, Pete Karas was stunned.
The Boynton Beach High School athletic director filed paperwork for Lingholm to participate in the state bowling tournament each of the past two years, but never saw him until this season's tryouts.
Ryan Lingholm, who bowled a perfect game Thursday, twists his upper body away from the lane during his throwing motion. 'I'm confident most of the time,' he said.
This boy, a junior, did not look like the other athletes. His arms were shorter than average and he couldn't raise them above his head or fully extend them. His wrists were cocked at an angle and his fingers did not appear capable of the standard bowling grip.
Karas asked his wife, Veronica, who coaches the team, about the student.
"When she told me it was Ryan, I was taken aback," Karas said. "I'd never had the privilege of meeting Ryan, so it was just a name on a sheet of paper for me. Then I watched him bowl.
"If you didn't watch the person who threw the ball ... you wouldn't know he has any type of physical impairment. You would think it was a professional bowler because of the bite, the spin and the different shots he can make."
Lingholm, 16, was born with a genetic disease known as arthrogryposis, which causes extreme joint contraction. The birth defect can afflict any joint and Lingholm is affected in his upper body.
"It affects one out of every 3,000 births, so it's actually pretty common," said Dr. Lisa Baumbach-Reardon, a geneticist at the University of Miami. "We see a lot of children with it."
But Baumbach-Reardon said she rarely sees those children excel at sports, especially at the level Lingholm displayed Thursday, when he bowled a perfect game — the first in school history and his first since he began bowling nine years ago.
"It was just the greatest feeling," Lingholm said. "I was pretty level until about the eighth frame, because I've been there so many times, but when I hit the ninth frame it started to get to me. Then when I threw the first two in the 10th, I was really excited. I've always wanted the 300 game."
Lingholm was not the only one excited. Boynton Beach's opponent, St. Andrew's, rallied behind him.
"Our players were filming it on their cellphones," St. Andrew's coach Roberta Wheeler said. "For anybody to bowl a 300 game is great. For him, who has overcome a handicap, it is incredible. It brought tears to everybody's eyes."
Karas was ecstatic when his wife called with the news.
"I had goose bumps," Karas said. "With an imperfect body, this young man has achieved perfection. How many of us are ever perfect? To do that, when he's not even supposed to be able to bowl, according to some people, is as feel-good of a moment as I think I've ever had."
The next morning, Karas sent word of Lingholm's achievement through an e-mail and the public-address system at the school.
"I usually just hear about football stuff, so I never actually thought it would be me," Lingholm said of the announcement. "I had teachers coming up to me, and friends. I had a lot of text messages congratulating me, so it was good. You can't beat the feeling."
Karas said the feat touched everyone at the school.
"People who don't generally say 'hey' to me, stopped and said, 'What a great story,' " Karas said. "I got an e-mail from one of our volunteer secretaries who said, 'I had a horrible morning, but this made my day. I feel so much better now.'
Lingholm is not able to execute a traditional bowler's throwing motion, but has his own style.
He puts two fingers in the holes of the ball and rests his thumb on the outer surface. He holds the ball with both hands and as he makes his approach, he rotates his body away from the pins to get momentum before spinning back and sending the ball down the lane.
"Most bowlers use reference marks on the lanes, like arrows, but I don't," he said. "I start out looking at the pins, and then when I go into my backswing, I blank out. I'm confident most of the time, but there are still times where the ball goes into the gutter because I don't have a reference point."
His unique style was not designed deliberately, but it was the natural motion he developed while trying to roll the ball at age 7. Lingholm's mother, Jeanette, worked as a bartender at Fair Lanes (now AMF Boynton Beach), and Lingholm frequently would tag along and watch.
Eventually, he decided to give it a try.
"I just started throwing with the flow of the ball," Lingholm said. "My backswing doesn't go high, so I basically use gravity and just a little bit of my own force."
Lingholm, who has back pain after he bowls, couldn't bowl for four months his freshman year because of a hairline fracture in his spine.
In bowling circles, neither his inimitable style nor his disease comes up when Lingholm is discussed. His 300 game was no fluke. Lingholm has come as close as 288 in the past and averaged 219 this season as Boynton Beach's No. 1 bowler. He finished 14th in last year's state tournament.
"He's a go-to guy," Veronica Karas said. "His handicap isn't pointed out or talked about. The players and coaches don't see Ryan that way. We just talk about how good he is."
Lingholm struggled in Tuesday's district match and did not qualify for the state tournament, but his perfect game has made this a memorable season for himself, his school and the local bowling community.
"I'll still always think of it as a pretty good year," Lingholm said. "At least I know I bowled the 300, and it's what I'd been pushing for all my life."
