SHEPHERD — After more than 60 years on the lanes, a Montana bowler hit a rare milestone Sunday with 200 tournaments in a local senior league built on consistency and community.
Watch this Montana bowler keep rolling with 200 tournaments:
The Double Nickel Scratch Association, a scratch, double-elimination tournament league for bowlers 55 and older, holds eight events each season and draws competitors from across Montana and Wyoming. The year-end tournament brought nearly 40 bowlers together on Sunday at Town and Country Lanes near Shepherd, with a $200 top prize.
But the tournament has always been about more than strikes and spares.
“It takes stamina. It takes timing,” said Dale Matthaes, the league’s longtime manager and recordkeeper. “There's great people out there that love to bowl, and they enjoy it. The seniors, especially, they love going out and bowling.”
Matthaes has tracked the league’s history since joining in 2000. The tournament dates back to the early 1990s, when a small group of bowlers gathered at Heights Lanes. Over the years, it has grown into a tight-knit community built on consistency and camaraderie.
“This group of guys here, you won't find anything bad with them, and the thing of it is, we have a policy: We leave the attitude out the door," he said. "This is for fun. It's not cut and dry, blood, you're going to live tomorrow."
“It keeps us going. It's a good activity. Anybody can do it to their level, and it's just a lot of fun,” said Chester Gilliam, a bowler from Lovell, Wyo., who has bowled for more than 60 years himself. "We've been bowling together since we were young guys when we were all bowling young scratch tournaments … now that our egos got put on the back shelf, we get along good.”
The season-ending tournament also serves a larger purpose. Each year, the group awards a $250 Dave Rodden Memorial Scholarship to a youth bowler in honor of a fellow bowler who died on the lanes.
"The reason we do it here is because this is where we lost him. He had a heart attack on the lanes," said Matthaes.
On Sunday, that tradition continued, along with a surprise. The league honored one of their own, 82-year-old Bert Stiles, with a plaque recognizing his achievement of bowling in 200 tournaments.
“Bert Stiles is here every tournament. It doesn't matter. He's here. He enjoys it. He may not qualify, but he loves the game of bowling," said Matthaes. "The guy is one of those guys that just supports his sport. It doesn't matter who it is, where it's at, he goes everywhere, and that's what it's about.”
A retired farmer living west of Broadview, Stiles has spent more than 60 years bowling. He still makes the roughly 40-mile drive into town multiple times a week to practice and rarely misses a tournament.
“I try to make it, and people give me a bad time, 'Why did you drive down here with all those snowflakes?' Because, (it's) time to bowl," Stiles said with a laugh.
He reached his 100th tournament in 2012. Fourteen years later, he doubled it at the league's February tournament in Lovell. With only eight tournaments a year, even the most consistent bowlers can take more than a decade to reach 100.
“Well, (Matthaes) asked me, he said, 'How many tournaments have you bowled?' I said, 'I think probably maybe 190,' and he turned around, and he said, "Today is your 200th.' Oh, really? I wasn't expecting that," recalled Stiles. "And here I am again on my 201st tournament.”
That kind of consistency hasn’t gone unnoticed by fellow competitors.
"I bowled in over a hundred of them, and he's got 200. That's a lot," said Gilliam. "We have seven, eight tournaments a year, so you can figure out how many years he's been doing it to get to 200."
"You'll never find anybody who participates in 200 tournaments anywhere in youth, in amateur sports," added Matthaes. “And that's the thing, it's dedication that you love the sport of bowling.”
Stiles, however, shrugs off the attention. For him, the recognition was never about the numbers.
"I just come to have fun with everybody," he said. “I just try to do the best I can, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work."
For many here, it's about showing up and sharing the passion of the sport they love. In a sport where anyone can play, the real reward isn’t the strike or perfect score, but the people standing in the lanes beside you.
"It's the most participated sport in the world. Everybody can bowl," said Matthaes. "Who cares what you bowl? Go out and have fun. That's what it's about."
