Let's hold this.
Are you going to pitch it?
Everybody ready?
One, two, three.
Sing, can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Applause
Quite naturally, if I hear bowling pins and bowling balls crashing into pins, then I know I'm in a bowling alley.
All right, now, if I'm up on a lane, it's my turn to bowl, I have my sense of feel of touch, so I reach out and I look for the rail.
The rail is always in the same position, so I just reach out with my left hand until I find that rail.
And once I have that, then I'm able to kind of line myself up and release that ball, you know, do my approach and release the ball and hopefully get a strike down at the other end.
You know, once you have lost the element of sight, if you no longer have vision, then the sound and the touch are your next most prevalent senses.
Applause
There is an energy level that is there when you walk in.
And especially if everyone else is already there, if a number of people are already there, you know, it's like the anticipation of the tournament and the anticipation of friends.
You know, people that we know in other locations that we haven't seen since our last tournament or whatever, so it's a chance for us to get out and, you know, try and kick a little butt sometime.
Applause
Okay, I've rattled fast and I've rattled quick and I'm now ready to do my thing.
Are we ready to rumble?
Yeah!
That sounds real good and you're ready!
All right, let them hear you all over the capital city!
All right, let's gather the ladies and let the butt-ticket begin!
I'm sure it started in my late 20s as I began to accept the fact that despite blindness, I was just a regular person and I didn't care what people thought of me physically, it's what I thought of myself.
A person who has sighted who has no disabilities tries to imagine what our lives are like and treats us accordingly.
They see us with our kids when we were small and they're, oh, those poor blind people, what's poor about us?
So our eyes don't work.
We're still parents, we're still functioning and I know people that are 60, 70, 80 years old that never accepted it.
You know, I feel bad for them but I can't, the only thing I can do is be an example.
That's all I can be.
I don't wake up in the morning and go, oh man, another day in the dark.
I'm thankful that I woke up.
I usually have my computer in my head.
I might be off a pin or two.
I have that score pretty much running in my head.
But if I'm not doing good, then I'm checking.
How are you doing?
I'm struggling.
I'm hanging in there.
What'd you do?
My first day.
I saw that one.
I don't know what I'm doing right now.
I don't ask.
Nice shot, Rod.
Is Alice doing it this year?
No, she only did the teams today.
So I'm the only woman?
Yep.
Does that ever matter?
I have a job to do.
That's right, you do.
It only takes one woman to win.
First of all, going blind was like probably one of the better things that could have happened
to me.
And the reason why I said it is because I look at a lot of the people that I grew up
around and where they are now.
And it's like, you know, I have to sit back and go.
Where could I have been?
When I look at a lot of the places that they've been, I'd rather be blind and be where I am
now.
That's probably a lot of people think I'm crazy for saying that, but really going blind
was like a blessing for me because I mean, a lot of my classmates are dead.
A lot of them are incarcerated.
Blindness saved me from having to deal with any of that.
But I can handle this.
You know, I can still be successful.
I might not be able to do all the stuff that I wanted to do, you know, growing up because
one of my biggest things was when I could see was I always wanted to be a police officer.
Okay, I may never be able to do that, but there's something else out there that I can
do and be successful.
And that's why I participate in like the blind bowling league, the beat ball, you know,
anything that I can do, I do it because it's just the drive for success.
It motivates me.
Success to me is like a need.
I need to know that I'm successful because if you're not going to be successful, you
know, really what's the purpose of living life if you're just going to sit around and
never accomplish anything.
The shootout was something that I wasn't going to do.
I never really expected to make it past round one.
And once I started it and I got through the first game, maybe I have a chance.
But I mean, I made it through five rounds.
I did good.
And I knew with that I was going to make it to the end.
I just didn't know who I was going to be bowling against, but I was going to make it.
And then once I got there and realized that I was going to be bowling against James, it
was like, okay, if I'm going to lose to anybody, I'd rather it be him, but I can win this.
The uniqueness of bowling against Rod was I was bowling against a young man that I mentored.
I've known him since he was 14.
He was a very angry kid, but that's not unusual.
All of us were blind.
Go through a period where we're really angry.
And he had a temperament about him that was different than most.
His willingness to step way outside the box to do what it took to be successful.
By the time he was prepared to graduate, Rod Best was a truly special young man.
They probably do it, but I didn't do it just because of who he is.
I mean, he's Mr. Benton, you know what I'm saying?
It's like, how do you trash talk whether you're serious or not serious?
How do you trash talk somebody that you look up to as a role model?
I mean, this is an important part of the blind community.
It's almost like you having somebody that you look up to.
You want to be like them and they want to see you be like them or be better than them.
And that's kind of why I took to him and a couple of the other older guys, you know, losing my eyesight at 14.
I was really looking for somebody that could kind of show me the way because it was a new life for me.
They don't cover her and give her a break.
You can close right now.
The first thing you can do for me.
It might be a split.
It is.
It's a 4-6.
Oh, yeah.
Field goal is good.
One, two, four, JB.
Rod may be one of the younger cases.
You know, I've watched him in school, mentored him, and I see where he is today.
But I think people were surprised that he was there because of his average.
He was not supposed to be in that position.
And when he did, amazing things began to happen.
I did exactly what I needed to do.
Rod fired a 143 in that game and he was looking stronger at that point.
I watched him bowl the other games with a 128-115 and a 95.
And in the 95 game, he didn't bowl bad.
He just wasn't covering his spares.
We're kind of watching that.
I'm trying not to focus on what the other guys are doing.
I'm just trying to make sure that I stay where I need to be.
We've all now bowled five games.
Somebody's going to tire out and their game is going to go south.
When you can position your body on the lane and keep your arm and hand in a consistent position to deliver the ball,
then you're going to knock down pins more and more throughout the course of that game.
There was a crowd gathering when he bowled the 143.
So he was not affected by the fact that there were probably more outlaws around than other bowlers.
I kind of blocked everything out and was just focused on just me and him.
Me and him, round and round.
Him not running to me, me not running to him.
But he had settled in and had decided, I can do this and I can be good at this and I'm going to compete.
And I'm going to push right now to do something great.
And just getting it done because the adrenaline was really pumping.
Yeah, I was getting hype.
I was really getting hype, really feeling good.
And the adrenaline was pumping, but it wasn't pumping as hard as that last game.
Because I knew the last game, there is no top three.
Is it him or me?
I knew that if I didn't really step my game up and get all straights in the next three or four frames,
he's going to get me.
I was starting to get my game together and it was just a matter of trying to maintain my stamina.
I bowl really hard, physically.
I put a lot into it.
But I want to make sure that I can cover my average and try to put points on top of that.
So I'm focused on that.
If I had just focused on the game like I did in the four games prior to that,
I probably wouldn't have lost as bad.
But he got me by about 80 points.
He actually said that he was proud of me and that was like really encouraging to me
for somebody to beat me like that and then encourage me to do better because they know it's in me.
One of the things that has really inspired me for these people not to be able to have any sight.
They're real competitive, but the sportsmanship, we can bowl and get beat in the ground
and go sit down and eat chicken wings together.
