In tenpin bowling, it’s usually about the bowling. But sometimes it’s about the jeans.
Seven-year-old Grayson Powell bowled the game of his life to win his team of three a youth bowling tournament in the Newfoundland city of St John’s on Saturday. But shortly after his 171-point game propelled Riverdale to the title, Grayson was disqualified, and was unable to collect his prize.
The reason? He wore the wrong trousers.
“The rule is you have to wear black pants,” Todd Powell, Grayson’s father, explained to CBC. Grayson was wearing faded black jeans – which were evidently not black enough.
So as Grayson waited in line to collect his gold medal, Gord Davis, the provincial director at Youth Bowl Canada, informed Grayson’s parents that their son was to be disqualified for his sartorial breach.
Powell Sr said he was distinctly unimpressed with Davis’s ruling. “If this is what sport is about when it comes to kids … shame on them.”
But Davis’s organisation insists it did nothing wrong, and said the dress code for Provincial A tournaments had been in place “for decades”. In an impassioned defence on Facebook that ran to 2,600 words and seemed to have been written by Davis, Newfoundland & Labrador YBC rejected accusations of wrongdoing and said simply: rules were rules.
“Mr Todd Powell knew full aware of the dress code, and sent his child to Provincials knowing that it was against the rules,” the post read. “Why is NL YBC in the wrong here, when parents knowingly broke the rules, and we are the bad guys?
“We did nothing wrong. Stop blaming NL YBC and [president] Gord Davis for something that should never have had happened. Ignorance of a rule … is not the fault of the governing body.”
Powell Sr pointed out to CBC that his son Grayson had been allowed to bowl throughout. Why wait until he had finished to disqualify him? “The problem I have with it … they allowed him to bowl prior. He owes these three kids a written apology.”
YL NBC said additional opinions had been needed with other executive members before a ruling could be made. “I was not going to embarrass those kids by stopping play and making a scene,” Davis wrote.
Later, on the same Facebook page, Gord Davis said that even though the decision could not be reversed, Grayson and his team would be presented with gold medals in a special ceremony because the situation had been “blown out of proportion for simple communication problems”.
“I informed Todd that the kids had bowled magnificently and yes they deserve to be recognized for their accomplishments,” Davis wrote.
“We will make sure these kids are taken care of first because that is what we are all about. We apologized for what decision we had to make and the fact that they were not relayed any information during the first or third game.”
The governing body said it wished to move on from the controversy and simply concentrate on bowling. “Any kid can play this sport,” the post read. “Lots of kids won’t play sports because they feel they don’t belong and they are bullied, or just not good enough. Well, bowling is not like that: we treat all kids equally.”
Providing, of course, they’re wearing the right pants.
