Unified Bowling: New Program Representing Regis Groff Among State Qualifiers

AURORA – Regis Groff's Jayden Mlinek has bowled a lot of frames in his life. They just happen to have been on Wii bowling.

You see, he's new to regular bowling, as are all of his teammates except Jessalynn Key.

"I really never went bowling a lot until I joined Unified," Mlinek said.

Despite their youthful inexperience – this is the first year of the Unified bowling program at Regis Groff – they won last week's Region 7 tournament over runner-up Denver South and third-place finisher Denver North.

Now Mlinek, Key, Aaron Tavenner, Kevin Garces-Rivera and Mikayla Flores will be competing at CHSAA's Unified Bowling State Championships on Friday, beginning at 10:45 a.m. at the Lucky Strike (formerly Bowlero) in Lone Tree.

The Fusion are among 29 programs represented at the state championships.

"Obviously, I want to win (state), but also just the experience of being able to... I haven't played a lot of sports or anything like that, so being able to go to state in anything is nice," Mlinek said.

Tavenner is also grateful for the opportunity, especially for the strikes.

"I like when Franki (Grinage, assistant coach) helps me stay on-task and says, 'get some strikes,'" he said.

He had a mixed bag at regionals, but is one of the top bowlers for Regis Groff.

"I made a couple strikes and I made a couple gutter balls too, but the last time I went up there I said, 'all right, no more gutter balls,'" he said.

Unified sports combine students with intellectual disabilities (athletes) and those without intellectual disabilities (partners) in sports and activities. Young people with disabilities have limited opportunities to play on their high school sports teams.

However, Unified programs create chances, and CHSAA has joined in by also sanctioning the Unified Esports Mario Kart and offering Unified activities at other state championships such as wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, cross country, track and basketball.

The Fusion showed progress at regionals, clinching the team championship one week after finishing third at the league championships. And yet, Unified bowling is about so much more than earning strikes and avoiding gutter balls.

"When I think of highlights, I think of students dapping each other up, supporting each other with strikes or making a really hard shot," assistant coach Franki Grinage said. "Then, just them competing with their scores. I thought it was just really cool seeing students who maybe haven't really connected with each other before get a chance to do that through Unified bowling."

The Regis Groff team is a culmination of multiple schools coming together.

"It's actually two (other) schools that make up our sports teams," Grinage said, who is an assistant to head coach Ivy Suarez. "We share a campus. Half of the building is Rocky Mountain Prep RISE, which is who I teach for. I've taught (special education) for Rocky Mountain Prep RISE, this is my fifth year. The other school is KIPP Northeast Denver Leadership Academy. Since we share a campus, we also do our sports teams together."

The state competition will be tournament play, with each team bowling five three-player co-ed/modified Baker Games and the top three teams being determined by total pinfall.

All teams will play in an open format with no bracket. The top-two scores (based on total pinfall) will determine the state champion and runner-up.

Grinage, Suarez, and their team of about 20 athletes and partners comprise the first Unified sports team for Regis Groff. Athletic director Shawn Smith created the program and asked Grinage and Suarez to break new ground.

At Regis Groff, the first year has certainly been a success, not only in competitions but also in bringing students together.

"Unified sports is a great way to connect students with disabilities and students without disabilities to come together," Grinage said. "It drops the line where they're able to have fun, they're able to have a common goal together, they're able to see one another as humans like themselves, and be able to compete. It's a really cool thing that DPS does with being able to have unified sports. We plan to do more unified sports in the future, like basketball."