The Youth Bowling Round Table: Dealing with Growth Spurts, Mental Game Instruction, and Benchmarking Skills

Welcome again to Bowling This Month’s Youth Bowling Round Table. In this recurring feature, we are taking aim at questions related to youth bowling. We talk about youth bowlers, skill development, getting ready for tournaments, and other topics of interest to young players, their parents, and coaches. We feature trusted Bowling This Month contributors from various backgrounds to lend their expertise and opinions on questions each month. If there is a question you’d like to ask our panelists, please feel free to comment below and we will try to address it in upcoming segments.

This month’s topics include dealing with adolescent growth spurts, mental game instruction, and how to benchmark the skills of youth bowlers. Special thanks to this month’s panelists, Juha Maja, Heather D’Errico, Joe Hoenig, Josh Blanchard, and Tyrel Rose. Let’s jump in.

How do you deal with adolescent growth spurts and changes in body shape to maintain a sound technical game?

Heather D’Errico

This is tricky, as it is inevitably going to make some things in the physical game inconsistent. I would use this as a time to coach the youth athlete on having a growth mindset and being okay with the times of challenge and adversity. Help them to learn to control what is controllable and not let something out of their control leave them feeling defeated. They should have an understanding that the body is changing and they can’t control that, but they CAN control their reaction and mindset about it. They CAN control their decision-making on the lanes, their bowling ball ...