Practice Makes Perfect

by Richard Harms

Marion Ladewig never intended to be a bowler. The Grand Rapids native originally established herself locally as a skilled softball player on her brother’s team. “I wasn’t much of a pitcher. But I was a good shortstop. A slick fielder, I suppose. I was also a hard-hitting batter,” she told Herman Weiskopf for his book The Perfect Game. But four years after she was convinced by an area businessman to try bowling, she won her first championship. Within another decade, Marion Ladewig became one of the country’s greatest bowlers.

Born in 1914, Ladewig did not start bowling until she was twenty-one. Several of her softball teammates persuaded her to try bowling and in 1935 she rolled her first game, an unimpressive eighty-eight. Bowling lane owner and sports promoter William T. Morrissey Sr. had seen Ladewig’s skills on the softball field and felt the five-foot, two-inch athlete had potential. “He gave me the opportunity to come down to his lanes and learn how to bowl. Two of the men there gave me pointers, and [Morrissey] gave me free practice; I couldn’t afford to bowl,” Ladewig said.

Within a year her average score was 149; by the 1940-41 season, Ladewig won her first tournament—the 1941 Western Michigan Gold Pin Classic. During the next two years, she won an assortment of Midwestern tournaments. Later in life she claimed to have little native ability for bowling, attributing her success to having played eight to ten practice games a day. “You definitely have to practice to keep to your timing in the groove.”

In 1948 as Ladewig appeared headed for national recognition, bursitis struck and forced her to stop bowling for two months. Although she would be plagued with the ailment for the rest of her career, less than ten months after the bursitis attack, Marion entered and won the national All Star Match Game tournament in Chicago. During the forty-eight-game match, Ladewig averaged a score of 198, which helped her to the semifinals. On the last day of the finals she bowled eight games, averaging 210 pins. In addition to the five-hundred-dollar purse, Ladewig earned a personal appearance contract with Brunswick, a leading manufacturer of bowling equipment, that lasted thirty years. “Signing with them was the best thing that ever happened to me besides learning to bowl in Mr. Morrissey’s place,” she later remembered.

By the 1950s Ladewig was at the top of her game, winning numerous regional and national tournaments, both as an individual and on teams. She was named Bowler of the Year from 1950 to 1954. She traveled around the world, promoting bowling and inspiring athletes in all sports. “I’ve been to every state in the Union through Brunswick. I’ve also been to Australia and Europe. I guess when I began bowling, it never entered my mind that I would do all these things.”

Ladewig was one of the organizers of the Professional Women Bowler’s Association in 1959; a year later, she won its inaugural tournament. In 1962 she won the World Invitational and All Star Tournament. The next year the Professional Bowling Writers Association chose her as bowler of the year. In 1964 Ladewig became the first Superior Performance inductee into the Women’s International Bowling Congress Hall of Fame. She retired from match-game competition later that year, although she remained active in the sport.

In 1984 Ladewig became the first woman bowler inducted into the Women’s Sports Foundation Hall of Fame. She represented Brunswick at the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul, where bowling was a demonstration sport. Ladewig’s skill and personality convinced many other women to take up bowling and according to one observer, also paved the way for women in other professional sports.

In 1991 Ladewig received the Salute to Champions award from the National Bowling Hall of Fame in St. Louis. When asked what she had that other women bowlers lacked, Ladewig answered modestly, “It was a combination of things, I guess. Mostly it was my determination and my concentration.” Today the eighty-three-year-old Ladewig, still regarded as a bowling legend by those who bowl, lives in Grand Rapids.

Richard Harms is the archivist for the Grand Rapids Public Library. His article “What Lies Beneath the Green” appeared in the July/August 1996 issue of Michigan History.