Dartmouth's Unified Bowling Keeps Rolling with Engineering Class

At Dartmouth High School, COVID has changed the athletic landscape in many ways, but that didn't stop a group of engineering students from giving their classmates' bowling league a second chance.

Miss Taylor and Mrs. August are the Co-Advisors of the Unified Bowling Cub. Unified Bowling is the combination of students with and without special needs to build teamwork and social skills while having fun at the bowling alley. This is the fifth year that the Unified Bowling Club has operated through DHS and teams would compete against each other once a week during the winter semester at Wonder Bowl in New Bedford.

Due to the pandemic, the club is not able to physically go to Wonder Bowl this year. They got creative and approached engineering with an idea to build a bowling alley inside Dartmouth High School. Mr. Brodsky did not hesitate.

DHSTVmedia posted an interview from Dartmouth High News Now on YouTube back in December of 2020. The teachers discussed how the concept is becoming a reality in 2021.

“We love projects like that, said Mr. Brodsky. “So, that’s really cool for us to have a customer come to us with specs. Like, ‘Here’s a bowling pin. We need to set up 10 of them exactly the same every time and these are the dimensions. Can you design something to help us out?”

The class engineered a solution that would make bowling league possible without leaving the building. The final product is an 87-foot-long foldable lane that will run across two hallways in front of Mrs. Augusts’ classroom.

The unified athletics program builds camaraderie among students the same as any traditional sports program does while also giving students access to athletics they may not have otherwise.