Bowling
Favorite athlete: Bill O’Neill
Favorite team: Crimson Elephants
Favorite memory competing in sports: Participating in Regionals my first year as a Freshman and every year since
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Watching one of the girls go face first down the lane after she ran outside in the rain to get pizza with her shoes on
Music on mobile device: Country or Disney Soundtracks
Future plans: Go to University of Alabama and get a degree in Nursing to eventually be paid to travel and help kids in Third World countries
Words to live by: “I can’t swim, but I can keep myself from dying.”
One goal before turning 30: To bowl a 300 and travel to at least 3 countries
One thing people don’t know about me: I enjoy sewing and making blankets
By Ed Morrone
Sierra Dahling was a member of a bowling family decades before she was even born.
Even if she didn’t know it yet, the Abington senior was destined for a life on the lanes. Perhaps you’ve heard of football or basketball or lacrosse families, but make no mistake about it: the Dahling clan has, is and always will be deeply rooted in bowling.
“It started way before my current family,” Dahling said. “My great grandmother bowled and she taught my grandma how to bowl, who then taught my mom. It’s been around forever in my family.
“Most of the couples in our family met at a bowling alley, which is kind of cool. It’s a sport you can do no matter how athletic you are. And in other sports, people of different ages don’t mix together, but in bowling, there’s adult-youth tournaments so I can bowl with my 9-year-old brother. My dad can bowl with me. It’s just something we can all do together, and that’s what has kept it in our family for so long.”
Dahling estimated that she’s been bowling competitively since she was 4, the earliest age for a child to do so, but really, she’s been bowling “since I was 18 months old, basically since I’ve been able to walk,” she said. Her mother used to manage the Willow Grove Park Bowling Lanes, which meant tons of access and time to practice her craft from a very early age.
For Dahling, it was always bowling. Nothing else even remotely compared.
“I tried Tee-ball when I was 4, and I realized how terrible I was at it,” she said. “I can’t run to save my life and I couldn’t hit the ball even though it was on a tee. But once I was able to start bowling myself, it was like, ‘Wow, I don’t suck at this! This is cool, I can actually do this.’”
Dahling has been a four-year member of Abington’s bowling team, and according to head coach Brian Wenders, the team’s record is 46-9 in that span. The program has either won the league or finished second all four years, and Dahling has made marked improvements each season. Her average has gone up 24 pins from freshman to senior year (139 to 163), and Wenders said in his 20 years as coach, Dahling has the eighth-highest average of any player to come through the program. She also has the fifth-highest single game, at 233, and fifth-highest series, at 610.
Not only that, but Dahling has participated in the Eastern Regional Tournament, which begins this coming Friday, in all four of her years at Abington. She has improved her finish each season as well, from 139th as a freshman to 130th as a sophomore to 96th as a junior. As a team, Abington has finished 17th the last two seasons, roughly middle of the pack, and both Dahling and the Ghosts would like to see improvement in what will be her final go-round.
“Sierra is a good spare shooter,” Wenders said. “That’s what separates the better bowlers from average ones. The difference with her is her consistency and ability to make any shot. She had two older sisters on the team when she was a freshman, and since then she’s stepped up to become our anchor. She wants the pressure. She wants the match to come down to her. Her willingness to put the team on her shoulders is impressive.”
Of course, the sibling/family rivalry has only motivated Dahling to get better. Her older sisters — Dana, 21, and Erica, 20 — have always pushed her, and Dahling’s willingness to push back has created a perpetual sense of friendly competition. It’s also why she doesn’t fear those big moments when all eyes are on her at the lanes.
“The competition is more like a game to us, like a really intense game of Candyland,” she said. “One of my sisters was our anchor previously, so not only do you not want to mess it up for yourself, but for your family as well. It’s not just the pressure of my team, but also my life. It kind of fuels me. It sounds selfish, but I like it when everybody has to pay attention to what I’m doing, and if I miss the shot, then we lose the match.”
Dahling has had plenty of time to hone her skills and identify her strengths and weaknesses, what she was able to do versus what she can’t or shouldn’t do when she’s bowling. For example, Wenders described her as “tiny,” and Dahling said she’s 5-feet tall and barely 100 lbs. Because of her diminutive frame, she can’t throw it with the force and strength that her father can.
“I have to throw it like a smaller person does,” she said.
Having a built-in coach like her mother didn’t hurt, either. When Dahling’s mom worked at Willow Grove, she would walk out on to the middle of the lane and point to a spot, which she and her sisters had to hit with precision every time. If they missed, they would start all over again.
“That instilled in me the discipline of actually wanting to get better,” Dahling said.
Wenders said Dahling is one of the few bowlers on the team that practices or plays year-round. Whereas many of the other bowlers use it as a second or third sport, Dahling is hyper-focused on bowling every single day. She bowls for Abington twice a week during the season, as well as in a Saturday morning league.
Once that’s over, tournament season hits, and once that wraps, she participates in summer leagues. Bowling, she said, is like any other sport in that you get out of it what you put in it. If one puts in the time and effort, odds are the results will take care of themselves.
With this coming weekend representing her last as a high school bowler, Dahling was feeling reflective.
“It comes down to putting your whole heart into it,” she said. “If you’re going to get up there and throw it in the gutter, then what was the point of waking up at 4 a.m. to drive here? What matters to me is actually trying.
“I try to motivate my team. I figure if they see I can be this excited about bowling, then the rest of them can be too. Their best doesn’t have to be my best; if you can only bowl an 85, then bowl an 85, don’t try to bowl a 200 like me. But I like the idea of people wanting to do what I do, being a role model fuels me.”
Wenders has noticed a transformation in Dahling. When she was a freshman, she was quieter than a church mouse; now, she delivers the pre-match motivational speeches and leads the team cheer before Abington hits the lanes.
“When you see her confidence and motivation to do well, you know that she is going to do well in life,” Wenders said. “She brings that to everything she does, and you can tell what type of person she is because of that.”
After high school, Dahling is bound for the University of Alabama to study nursing. She’s always wanted to be a nurse and wanted to study somewhere far away. From the time she was a kid, she used to tell her grandmother she wanted to go to California to see if the ocean looked any differently there than here.
Alabama has a strong and reputable nursing program, and when she visited the campus last summer, Dahling said she felt more home there than in Pennsylvania, “which is weird, considering I’ve lived here all my life.”
After she graduates, she wants to travel to Third World countries to help underprivileged children who desperately need medical attention. Dahling has a couple of part-time jobs, one of which is babysitting, and she loves spending time with and working with children. Like bowling, it’s something that just feels natural to her.
“From newborns until ages 4 to 5, that’s my favorite age,” she said. “It’s when you can see their personalities start to develop. As far as the Third World countries, who is helping these people? Nobody. I want to be the one who helps people get back on their feet. Babysitting kids and watching them grow up has been one of the greatest honors of my life. If I can be with kids all the time, then I’m going to go for it.”
Outside of bowling, Dahling is a Cub Scouts den leader for Pack 438, and also works at an ice cream parlor. She also loves to sew and make blankets, another interest that she inherited from her family. Dahling’s grandmother has always made blankets at Christmas for her and her siblings, and around age 9, she started making them herself. Now, she makes them for the kids she babysits, and said she’s looked into making them for pediatric patients at CHOP and NICU babies at Abington Hospital.
Before she turns 30, she hopes to bowl a perfect 300 game — her all-time high currently sits at 244 — and wants to get there before either of her sisters. (Her father has thrown dozens of perfect games, she said, so the motivation factor always remains strong in the Dahling household.)
Bowling has been such a big part of Dahling’s life, that she can’t envision a parallel universe where she never got indoctrinated into the sport. It’s taught her so many lessons, ones she will carry with her into college and life beyond.
“It’s mostly taught me to be myself,” she said. “It’s not your typical sport, but to me it’s everything. It’s that thing that brings my family together and keeps us rotating. What I’ll take with me the most is to be confident in the things you do. Not everyone will respect it or agree, but as long as you’re confident in what you do and say, then it doesn’t matter what others think.
“The person you have to please the most is yourself.”
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