SPOKANE, Wash. – For 10-year-old Gleason Garske, the sound of crashing bowling pins is all he knows. Strike after strike, the fourth-grader is unstoppable at the alleys, and he started at just two years old with his dad and great-grandmother.
“My dad would pick me up from my babysitter’s house, and grab my great-grandma, and he would take us on Tuesdays and Thursdays bowling,” Garske said. “And that went on for a year, and then covid hit, and then she passed away.”
He’s been attached to the lanes ever since, just recently bowling his first sanctioned 300 on his last game to win his tournament, and his coach Eddie Williams saw it all coming.
“The fear of throwing strikes was never there for him,” Williams said. “So, him doing it at his age, I’m almost not surprised. Only because of his talent and his lack of being afraid.”
“I mean, it was crazy, it was unbelievable,” Garske said. “I said to my dad, ‘Dad, I’m going to get a 300’, jokingly, because I say that every time I go to a tournament, and it actually happened, which was amazing.”
Gleason’s family fostered this fearless attitude, as he grew up in a house of athletes headed by his father Griffin and grandfather Scott, both football starters for the Eastern Washington Eagles.
“It’s kind of made me giggle about all the things that I struggled with growing up, which was temperament, and staying calm and staying in the moment,” Griffin Garske said. “But it’s been really good for me at my stage in my life to hopefully be able to pass that along to him and to other bowlers and other athletes.”
The father-son duo took bowling a step further, founding a charity Every Kid Bowls, donating 100% of all its apparel proceeds back to bowling balls and bags for local youth, a personal mission for Gleason.
“It means a lot to me, because I love giving back to the bowling community,” Garske said. “My dad asked me what my favorite memory of bowling was, and I said obviously getting my first bowling bowl. They go from just coming on Saturday morning and bowling league, to actually coming to the bowling alley and having fun and throwing their own bowling balls.”
Back to the lanes the young man goes, eager for the next opportunity.
“You know what’s fun about this, he’s only 10,” Williams said. “Inside his head, he knows what he’s seeing, and so, it’s such a natural game for him, it’s easy to coach someone who understands.”
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