It had been awhile, but Matt Stump still remembers that smell whenever he walks into a bowling alley or bowling center. It is something he will refamiliarize himself with after being named the Streetsboro Rockets’ bowling coach on Sep. 1.
“It is fun and it means a lot and my coaching mantra is that I have helped out coaching with little kids stuff as my daughter has grown up,” Stump said. “What it means to me is that just by teaching kids those things and teaching kids how to be good humans and beacons of sportsmanship and just helping them grow as kids. It means a lot to be in these kids’ lives and help them grow.”
Stump will assume role of head coach for both the girls’ and boys’ team. The first-year coach said it was a happy accident that he became the new Rockets’ bowling coach.
He said that his wife had seen a post on Facebook that the Streetsboro bowling program was in need of a new coach. Stump, who had bowled in youth and men’s leagues throughout his life, had always considered getting back into the sport.
“My daughter is a competitive dancer and some of the dance dads have talked about bowling the last couple of years and start a team and hop into a men’s league somewhere and bowl, so it had been kind of simmering in the back of my mind,” he noted.
Seeing the news that the Rockets were in need of a new bowling coach or the program may cease to exist was enough of a push for Stump to put his name forward. He inherits a program that has enough numbers to field two separate teams, a nice change compared to last year when there were not enough bowlers for a girls’ team, so the only two female bowlers competed with the boys.
According to Stump, he plans to start laying the bricks at the middle school level to develop more of a pipeline toward the high school bowling program.
“I have a couple of high school bowlers that have younger siblings in the middle school and they are also bowlers, so I am working with families now that have kids at the middle school to help get the word out,” Stump said. “Like any high school or college, we are going to lose kids every year and the only way to get them back is to make sure that we are known at the younger levels.”
For Stump, bowling was a sport that he excelled at from a young age. While he competed in other sports, bowling became his go-to sport especially when he was attending college in Kansas City.
“I am by no means the world’s best bowler, but it was something I could be okay at,” he said. “There is a lot of camaraderie and teamwork as there is for every team sport, but in bowling especially, you are sitting there as a team watching one person do something so there is a teamwork between the four of you or whatever rooting somebody on.”
It marks the first time that Stump has taken on the role as a varsity coach. He has some coaching experience dating back to coaching tee-ball when his daughter was younger and some church intramural sports, but he acknowledged that it is a significant change to coach high school students.
“I consider myself a player’s coach and wanting to understand how the kids are doing and how their day is,” he said. “I am interested in letting them know how they are doing and when to make sure they are okay and I am somebody they can talk to and goof around a little bit but still understand that there is a coaching responsibility that we are going to grow as people and grow as bowlers.”
Tryouts have not begun but based on the number of bowlers who have attended open gyms, Stump said he is optimistic that there will be plenty of bowlers representing Streetsboro in his first year at the helm. In addition to rebuilding the program from square one, Stump said he was also going to try and spread more awareness throughout the community, including having the Rockets compete in bowling invitationals for the first time in several years.
“I want to make sure that we are marketing the program and everybody knows what is going on and we have some kids that are really good bowlers and they are really good kids and just make sure everybody knows,” he said.
The new-look Rockets will open their season at the Metro Athletic Conference preseason tournament beginning on Nov. 16 at the Spins Bowl Kent Alley.
