Bowling wasn’t something Lincoln Sondreal had really aspired to.
While he enjoyed bowling with family during casual holiday events, he had also played quarterback of the Spooner, Wisconsin, high school team as a sophomore, leading his team to the playoffs. And he loved playing basketball.
But then life stepped in and took him in a different direction.
“I was diagnosed on March 30th, 2021,” the 18-year-old Mankato East senior said. “And I was just trying to figure out how to do this and go along with having Type 1 diabetes.”
As he tried practicing his previous sports, he realized a change was necessary.
“I saw bowling on YouTube and on TV, and I just thought the hook of the ball and how it smashes through the pins looked really cool and addicting,” he said. “The more I started doing it, the more I fell in love with it.”
His dad, Jesse, is Lincoln’s biggest fan. He said he knew once Lincoln committed to something he wasn’t going to be happy unless he improved.
They moved to Mankato in the summer of 2022, and Lincoln led the East bowling team to a conference tournament championship and was named first-team all-conference.
When the season ended, Lincoln joined three sanctioned bowling leagues and improvement quickly followed.
In the 40 days between Jan. 30 and March 13, Lincoln has done four times what most bowlers strive to do once in a multi-decade career. Four times, at least once in each of those three leagues, he has rolled perfect 300 games and recorded his first 800 series, an 820.
That’s a 273+ average over three games.
On a recent Tuesday, with an average of 232, his first game included spares in the first and third frames, and strikes in all others. He finished with 270.
To care for his diabetes, he wears a pump that regulates his insulin levels throughout the day. Like bowling, it’s a part of his life that he now can’t do without.
He has become a student of the game, but he’s still an 18-year-old who enjoys all aspects.
“I thought that everything, from when you start to the foul line into what happens after you throw the ball, just looks super cool. And it looks like a challenge I wanted to try and master,” he said.
He now owns about 35 balls and has equipment in his basement that allows him to care for his equipment to keep it in optimum condition.
For his dad’s birthday, he bought him a bowling ball. The pair bowls together in a couple of the leagues.
“(Lincoln is) a great kid. Easy to coach and always willing to listen and make adjustments,” said one of his high school coaches, Scott Wojcik. “For a two-handed bowler, he has so much potential and natural ability.”
The website skilledbowlers.com notes that the odds of rolling a perfect game in open bowling is 11,500-to-1. The odds of doing it during league bowling, when lane conditions are more consistent and bowlers perhaps a bit more skilled, are likely lower.
A professional bowler is likely to get a perfect game every 460 games or so.
So, to roll four perfect games within 40 days is extremely rare.
Jesse was unsure when Lincoln said he wanted to bowl two-handed, but his son provided statistics showing that two-handed bowlers are becoming the top winners on the professional PBA tour. It is one of the first of many things he has learned through Lincoln’s research and can-do attitude, he said.
In 2022, Lincoln led his Brookings, South Dakota, high school team to a state tournament title, the first for the school in 18 years. Big underdogs, they battled back from the losers’ bracket for the surprise win.
He had rolled several perfect games in practice, but it was his first one rolled in league at Victory Bowl on Jan. 30 that opened the flood gates.
The national bowling association, the USBC, only awards rings for 300 games rolled in sanctioned leagues that prove they follow condition requirements.
“I just think getting that first one (took the pressure off),” he said. “I had a different shot set up, and it matched a bit better for me. Once I got that first one at Victory, the honors scores just kept coming in.”
Lincoln is now considering where he wants to go to college. He wants to study Finance and Business Administration, but the opportunity to bowl will factor into his choice. Through success he has achieved in Junior Bowling, he has earned more than $5,000 that must go toward his future education.
Bowling professionally may be in his future, he said, and that will involve continued learning and gaining experience about the sport he has come to love.
Ironically, he realizes he wouldn’t be where he is if he had not received that diabetes diagnosis just under two years ago.
“I found that having diabetes, finding new stuff to do, new stuff to try, has given me an escape from the — I’m not going to say hard obstacles I have to endure — but it helps keep me active and distracted from the hard things I do have to go through on a daily basis.”