Rolling for Niños!

On Friday night, I was invited to participate in an exclusive charity event: Rolling for Niños.  The event is an annual fundraising charity bowling event where several business founders and owners come together to bowl for Casa de Los Ninos and the Boys and Girls Foundation.  There were a ton of sponsors who each established a team to bowl and every lane at the Lucky Strike in Tucson was filled (meaning 32 sponsors).  I was invited through Ray Carroll, the supervisor for Pima County, who I will add is a very classy gentleman as expected.  I don't actually know Ray personally, but my friend Jen works for him and that's how I got involved in this event. 

I'll be honest, I didn't know anything about Rolling for Niños before I got there on Friday night.  I soon learned that they raised over $250,000 for the childrens' foundations.  I met a lot of Tucson famous people, such as Chris Edwards from Tucson Appliance and Greg and Eric Geile, founders of SuperPAWN.  In any sense, pretty much everyone there was a successful business owner or founder and apparently they all know each other pretty well.  I was selected to sub for any team that night who didn't have a full roster of 4 people.  They found me a home on Hudson team, which I guess is basically Stephanie Hudson being a baller and sponsoring the event on her own name, lol.  It was a team of three girls (all married with very expensive-looking rings) and so that was the team I would end up playing for.  I will also mention that they were probably the routiest and loudest of all the teams, but it made for a very fun night!

The event included a 3-game set.  The first game was normal scratch bowling, the second game was 9 no-tap, and the third game was 3-6-9.  The girls bowled games close to 100-120 each game.  As for me, I bowled terribly the first game, only recording 130 pins and I was very disappointed in my pathetic showing.  However, the second game I bowled a 241 and the third I bowled a 189, securing to a 180+ average fo the night, which is close to my league average of 190.  For the record, a 9 no-tap game does mean every 9 on your first ball is made a strike, but even with that freebee, I only took advantage of it once, recording 6+ natural strikes in the game.  In fact, I really could've used the 9 no-tap in the first game where I got tapped 6 times, lol.  Finally, a 3-6-9 game means they automatically give everyone a strike in the 3rd, 6th, and 9th frames, so everyone's score in the third game was skewed up.

Our team didn't win that night and the team that took home the championship bowling pins was actually the team we bowled against in the next lane.  Either way I had a really fun time meeting and hanging out with all these either important or successful people, all of which were really nice and friendly.  Did I mention I got free beer and pizza all night long too? Can't complain with that!

At the end of the night there was also a raffle for various donated prizes.  There were several $50 gift certificates to fancy restaurants around Tucson, tickets to Diamondback or Wildcat games, but some of the best prizes included an antique guitar, an iPad 2, and a 42" LCD TV.  Raffle tickets were $20 a piece, or you could buy 7 for $100 or 20 for $200.  I only bought one, which didn't stand a chance to the several people who easily took the $200 deal, but there was big money in the house and it was probably like nothing to them.  Sadly I didn't win anything, but had I won that TV I honestly would've given it to my friend Jen who got me invited to the event and who's been hoping to get herself a new flatscreen TV anyway. :)

I also got to take home the shirt I'm wearing in the picture above that has the "Rolling for Niños" patch on it and it sounded as if they wanted me to come back next year, which would definitely be an honor.  For one night, I actually felt like an 'important' or 'successful' person and it honestly felt really cool. :D