BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Sports like soccer, basketball, baseball and softball are a staple of youth activity in the United States. Most towns offer these programs for young kids, and most will have tried at least one before they turn 10 years old.
 
What's not the norm is for kids to begin bowling competitively. Yet all nine members of the LIU Brooklyn women's bowling team, as well as head coach Kayla Jones, began at very young ages.
 
So where did it all begin? The recurring theme is family— and not just parents or siblings, but grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
 
Senior Brittany Hart picked up her first bowling ball when she was just four years old, though she did not start bowling competitively until she was seven. Her early start was influenced by the fact that bowling runs all the way back to her grandparents.
 
"My grandpa actually bowled one of the first 300s at a bowling alley with one ball," she said. "It was the 1950s and he was one of the only ones at the time, so growing up he was most influential to me."
 
 Hart's entire family is in the bowling game, from her parents to her aunts and uncles to her youngest sister. Sophomore Tori Burkins describes the same kind of situation, and how her start in bowling became almost inevitable.
 
"My mom is the one who started it all. My grandparents bowled, she started to bowl and then she got me into it," she said. "My uncle has like 30 300s, my grandmother bowled a 299 back in the 1980s which back then was a big thing for a woman to do. My cousin, who's the same age as I am, bowls for a community college at home and we're pretty back and forth."
 
Though bowling seems like it has an exclusive following, it continues to grow within the college realm. Women's bowling held its first NCAA Championship in 2004, and 64 schools now sponsor an NCAA-recognized program. The Northeast Conference has an eight-school bowling membership after it began sponsoring the sport in 2008.
 
At the high school level, bowling is much more widespread, with thousands of schools offering a varsity program, according to the United States Bowling Congress. It is there where a number of Blackbirds decided to pursue bowling at the collegiate level, like junior Natasha Bidwell.
 
Bidwell began at age four and was taught by her father. But her competitive side sparked in middle school when she joined the high school team.
 
"It hit me that I really needed to focus on it more and then all throughout high school I started getting more competitive," she said.
 
Sophomore Madison Lukosius has a slightly different story. Lukosius's entire immediate family bowls at a competitive level. Her parents, Cara and Michael, have numerous accolades, and her younger sister Karsyn is a freshman on the Fairleigh Dickinson team. Her mother was also her high school coach. However, it was a visit to LIU sealed her decision to bowl collegiately. 
 
"I know Madison's first love was field hockey, and she was looking at colleges to play at that level," said Cara Lukosius. "When Coach Jones approached her about an opportunity to bowl for LIU, she was hesitant.  After careful consideration and thought, Madison decided that she could get a quality education, compete in a sport that she loved, and have the city at her fingertips. Her decision was made."
 
Madison Lukosius said her family's love of bowling also helped change her mind.
 
"I played soccer from age 11 until I was in middle school and high school, and wasn't planning on bowling in college," Lukosius said. "I was planning on playing field hockey up until the last minute, before it changed and I decided to bowl instead. I realized I thought I'd miss bowling too much since that runs in my family."
 
Sophomore Victoria Shufelt managed to compete in two sports during her high school career, playing basketball for Watervliet High School in upstate New York and bowling in weekend leagues with her cousins, as everyone on her father's side bowls. Since she's been at LIU, her passion for the sport has increased tenfold.
 
"I was so passionate about basketball, but being here and having more time to be into bowling instead of just having the two days, I really am like 'Wow, there's so much more to it than I thought,' she said. There's definitely a lot of things to be passionate about."
 
And then there's head coach Kayla Jones, found herself in a similar situation during high school. Jones grew up in western Pennsylvania in a town called Johnstown, between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, and played basketball and softball for her school, Westmont Hilltop, which did not offer bowling. 
 
"I actually used to go into Pittsburgh and we traveled a lot after going to the Keystone State Games, which kind of sparked my interest," she said. "Then we would start traveling to Ohio and to Michigan. And I was also getting lessons from the old Team USA coach. After that I just wanted to bowl, bowl, bowl."
 
As she made her way through high school, she was nearing a time when she would have to make a decision about what sport to keep pursuing.
 
"Once you get to high school basketball, it becomes serious and I did that for my first three years. But before my senior year I had to choose," Jones said. "My parents left it open to me and asked what I wanted to do, and I liked bowling better."
 
Both of Jones' parents bowl, and her mother managed a bowling alley all throughout Jones's youth. Her introduction to the sport was inevitable, as it was a family tradition. She started bowling at around age eight competitively.
 
Jones said that many people she met throughout her bowling career she became close with.
 
"I had to travel so much, so I became friends with people in all different areas," she said. "There aren't as many opportunities for tournaments, so we kind of bond more over the big tournaments because there are very few of them."
 
The "family" dynamic in bowling spans beyond blood relatives. Bidwell says the LIU squad does a number of team bonding activities, and spends a lot of time together.
 
With four newcomers this season—Sally Anderson, Alyssa Balicki, Kristina Genova and Marlee Tyler--that friendship will play a major part in the team goals, like winning the Northeast Conference tournament.
 
As they head into the second half of the season, the Blackbirds will also have support from their family members, who make an effort to come to tournaments, whether it's the local St. Francis Brooklyn Terrier Invitational this Sunday, Jan. 18, or the Music City Classic in Tennessee in March.
 
Jones sums up their large amount of support in a few words.
 
"The bowling community, we stick together," she said.
 
Like a family.