Dec. 15, 2009

Garden City, N.Y. - The Adelphi's Women's Bowling Team is on route to a successful 2009-2010 winter campaign and junior Danielle Locurto is a big reason why. Danielle is primed for success, both on the bowling alley and off, as she anticipates a very special season.

LoCurto is in her third year on the Panthers' bowling team. She is a psychology major in the STEP program and intends on becoming an elementary school teacher after she graduates.

Growing up in Mount Sinai, New York, Danielle has been bowling since she was 7 years old. Bowling has been a family tradition in the LoCurto household stemming back to her paternal grandparents. Her father, Dominic, and her grandfather have been playing in what was known as a father-son league since the 1960's. Now Danielle and Dominic play together in that same league, though the title has since been changed to parent-child. "Bowling has always been the thing in my family. Sunday morning is the family league we'd play in, which gets pretty competitive between families in town," LoCurto explained.

Bowling has been more of a lifestyle than anything else for the entire LoCurto family. At least once a week every member of her family, from her grandparents to her parents and down to her younger sister Valerie, get together to bowl. "Even though I play competitively, I still use bowling as a way to relax," LoCurto said.

Danielle never saw bowling as anything more than a hobby and a way to relieve stress until her junior year at Mount Sinai High School. It was that year she was able to help create a coed (though predominantly male) bowling team. However, once the team was established it was ruled ineligible to compete in the state tournament due to an antiquated rule about opposite genders competing against one another.

Once Danielle started playing in scholarship tournaments, scouts from a handful of universities began to take a look at her. Adelphi University, in particular, already had sparked an interest in Danielle. Once they began to recruit her, Danielle knew that Adelphi was the right choice. "I had been looking at Adelphi anyway, but once they started looking at me, my decision was pretty obvious. Adelphi offered a good education and the right type of program I was looking for. It also was a close commute from home and had offered me a [competitive] scholarship."

Danielle was quick to find out that bowling at the collegiate level was very time consuming. "We have workouts at six in the morning twice a week. We mostly do conditioning, light weight training and cardio. Then we practice at least one night a week which consists of throwing anywhere from seven to ten games."

LoCurto is excited for this season and is confident in the incoming freshmen on the team and believes they are ready to compete at the collegiate level. She feels that although the team may be younger, the team camaraderie is better than ever. LoCurto and the Panthers are ready to make strides in becoming a Division II powerhouse.

This season the bowling team travels to challenge some more established and prestigious teams in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee. "Adelphi's team is only four or five years old. We're not big enough to compete at the conference level yet. But we are getting there, we're heading in the right direction" LoCurto added.

Edward Gutleber is a junior sports management major at Adelphi University.