IKAN
Puts Bowlers In A New League
THE ROTARIAN
DECEMBER 2004
By M.Kathleen Pratt
Before an accident left him paralyzed
from the neck down, Bill Miller was an active
collegestudent. The Leesburg,Fla., resident,
now 27, loved to work out and play racquetball.
At the University of Florida, intramural flag
football was his sport of choice. But just as
he was about to srart his senior year, a dorm
room fall dislocated two vertebrae and bruised
his spinal cord. Afrer the 1997 accident, recreation
took a backseat to more fundamental challenges
as he began the arduous process of relearning
to talk, eat, and breathe without the aid of
a ventilator.
Then Miller met Claude Giguere,
a member of the Rotary Club of The Villages,
Fla., and a former General Motors engineer.
Afrer learning about Miller's desire to get
back into some sort of recreational activity
from the young man's stepmother, a judge in
a courtroom where Giguere was a volunteer for
the local sheriff's department, he set out to
design a portable devicethat would allow anyone
to bowl. He enlisted Miller's help, and the
pair worked together to fine-rune a device called
an IKAN Bowler®, which attaches to a wheelchair
and allowsthe user to control the direction,
speed, and timing of the ball's release.Today,
Miller and nearly a dozen other paraplegicsand
quadriplegics use the speciallydesigned bowlersduring
outings to local alleys.
One of the group's regular destinations
is SpanishSpringsLanes, where Sue Blauvelt,
a member of the Rotary Club of Lady Lakes, is
manager. Blauvelt, who kept the alleyopen many
late nights for Miller and Giguere so they could
test their bowling device without interruptions,
is just one of many Rotarians involved in the
effort to enable more people with disabilitiesto
bowl. Recently, members of the Rotary Club of
The Villagesand the local Interact club have
joined Miller and his friends, who call themselves
the Quad Squad, at Spanish Springs. Two Rotary
club-sponsored service organizations for elementaryschool
age children, or Early Act clubs, have also
bowled with the group. According to Giguere,
the youths who bowl with the Quad Squad often
haven'thad a chance to spend time with people
who use wheelchairs, and the games provide them
with opportunities to ask questions and get
to know people in their community who have disabilities.
"It eliminates the curiosity
and fear that many people naturally have for
something they don't know about," says
Miller. "They quickly learn that, for the
most part, we're normal people who happen to
need wheelchairs and some help with physical
activities. Seeing us bowl and interacting with
us really drives home that idea. It puts people
at ease."
Giguere, however, tries to avoid
match-ups with anyone using the device he developed
with Miller. "I refuse to bowl against
them," he says, only halfjoking. "Four
or five of them bowl over 180. I can't bowl
over 180 - they shame me!"
Although the bowling outings
are mostly just a lot of fun for everyone involved,
they're also charity benefits.To raise money,
Interact and Early Act members hold "bowl-a-thons,"
soliciting pledgesbasedon their scores.The Villages
Rotary club matched funds raised at the first
bowl-a-thon, and the total went to purchase
two of the $2,000 bowling devicesfor Quad Squad
members to use. Rotarians have since held three
more bowl-a-thons with Interact and Early Act
clubs, raising enough money to purchase four
additional bowlers. One bowler went to a catastrophiccare
center in Atlanta that provides care and rehabilitation
servicesfor people learning to live without
the use of two or more limbs.A trauma center
in California received another.
"The Rotary Club of The
Villages realizedhow important getting [disabled]
people back into sports and social outings was
and made it our mission to help as much as we
could," says Cliff Moore, 2003-04 club
president. Moore says the fact that the events
provide a meeting place for young people and
community members with disabilities is a bonus.
.
"It's something that can
benefit everybody," says Moore. Members
have declared the bowl-a-thons an ongoing Centennial
Project and plan to hold four of the events
during the 2004-05 Rotary year.Their goal is
to donate bowlersto as many hospitals, residential
facilities,and loan banks as possible. As the
sport catches on - and Giguere, Miller, and
others expect it will, especially since the
American Bowling Congress and the Women's International
Bowling Congress recently amended their rules
to allow some devices like the IKAN Bowler® -
Moore hopes more Rotary clubs will adopt the
project. He notes that his club's bowling outings
always attract curious onlookers, which means
added publicity and support for the cause.
"There are times where we're
in a bowling alley and people with full use
of all of their limbs just stop and watch the
[bowlers with disabilities]. And then they go
back and look at their scores, and they just
shake their heads," he says. "We've
had three members join our club simply because
of watching these bowling tournaments in progress."
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