Unified Bowling expands to nine Jeffco League teams

WHEAT RIDGE — Unified Bowling has grown by leaps and bounds this school year.

A year ago only Chatfield and Littleton had teams competing in the second year of the Colorado High School Activities Association sanctioned sport. On Monday morning at Bowlero in Wheat Ridge there were nine Jeffco League teams — Arvada West, Bear Creek, Chatfield, Columbine, Jefferson, Lakewood, Littleton, Pomona and Wheat Ridge — competing at the Region 6 tournament.

Unified Bowling was launched as a CHSAA sanctioned sport just before COVID hit in 2020. That hurdle has taken a few years to really grow participating schools.

“Getting through COVID was difficult. Just like everything else,” Littleton High School athletic director Chris Enzminger admitted during Monday’s regional. “To go to nine schools from the Jeffco League now is awesome. The kids are having so much fun.”

A-West captured the regional title with a 561 score over the five games bowled. Bear Creek, who recored the single-game high of 150, took second with a score of 491. Chatfield placed third with a score of 488.

The Wildcats, Bears and Chargers will represent Jeffco at the state championships coming up next week. The Unified Bowling state finals will be held Friday, Nov. 18, at AMF Belleview Lanes in Englewood. Competition starts at 10:45 a.m. Pueblo South is the defending state champion.

“Ultimately I want Unified Bowling not to be this special thing that is new and for special needs kids,” Enzminger said. “When Unified Bowling doesn’t need its own recognition and it is just a fabric of what CHSAA is, we’ve done our job.”

Enzminger is the chair of the CHSAA Unified Bowling Advisory committee. His passion to get special needs student/athletes involved began when he was at Kennedy High School. When Enzminger was the athletic director at Kennedy High School his physical education teacher was heavily involved with Special Olympics Colorado.

Enzminger had a Unified Soccer team travel to Kansas City to play under the Special Olympics Colorado and Colorado Rapids (professional soccer team) banner.

“After that experience I knew I wanted to be involved with Special Olympics as much as I could,” Enzminger said. “I wanted to bring that Special Olympics feeling to CHSAA. It’s an awesome collaboration.”

The growth in Jeffco over the past year can also be credited to the work of Jeffco’s Adapted Athletics program. Bryan Wickoren (Adapted Physical Education Coordinator) and Katie Thompson (Adapted Physical Education teacher) were instrumental in getting the students that they work with daily at the school level involved.

“Bryan and Katie have been awesome,” Enzminger said. “They have reached out to the Special Education teachers and Adapted Athletics PE teachers to make this happen.”