Faces in the Crowd is a regular feature that provides a detailed and intimate look at the coaches, student-athletes and staff people that comprise Lincoln Memorial University athletics. The subject of today's feature is Director of Bowling Joseph Slowinski, who has combined his passion for bowling and his adventuring spirit to give back to the sport he loves.  

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Bowling runs through Joseph Slowinski's veins. He was, after all, born into a family with deep-seated roots in the sport. As a child growing up in Portland, Maine, where the winter can consume nearly nine months of the year, Slowinski remembers going bowling with his dad from the time he was two years old. His dad, a member of the Maine bowling Hall of Fame, served as a youth director for 25 years, and Joseph began competitive youth bowling at the ripe age of six.
 
Well before he had even reached high school, Slowinski knew that bowling would guide the path that his life would eventually take. In fact, he credits a trip to Ohio State during his formative middle school years for influencing his decision to take bowling seriously.
 
Slowinski's road was far from smooth, straight and narrow, though. Instead, he was transported along by a long and winding path that, despite transitions that briefly took him away from the sport, was connected by a common thread: his passion for bowling.
 
Following his high school career, Slowinski began the first of many adventures by packing his bags and traveling over 2,000 miles to attend West Texas State – now known as West Texas A&M – in Canyon, Texas as a walk-on for the bowling team. However, after just one year in the neck of the Lonestar State, Slowinski returned home in 1986 to finish his college career at the University of Maine.
 
Slowinski didn't bowl much after leaving West Texas State. He was burned out from being so far from his family as well as the grind of the day-to-day life of a college athlete. Slowinski worked in the pro shop at a local bowling center while attending school, but he wouldn't be formally involved in the sport again for a decade.
 
Like all college graduates, it was during that phase of his life that Slowinski had to decide what exactly he wanted to do. After earning a bachelor in both math and philosophy, he considered the education route as either a teacher or principle, but he was still putting out feelers to find a job in bowling.
 
As Slowinski learned, opportunities as a bowling coach were few and far between, so he explored other options. That opened the door for one of his next adventures: a trip to Hungary as a teacher. While he was teaching at a polytechnic college in Dunaújváros, Slowinski met his wife, Monika, in 1994.
 
Shortly after that, Slowinski returned to the states and pursued his master degree at Bowling Green State University, and that's when he was drawn brought back into the world of bowling. With two bowling centers placed conveniently within a mile of one another in the aptly named Bowling Green, Ohio, Slowinski served as a youth coach at Varsity Lanes and also helped establish the bowling program at BGSU.
 
From that point on, Slowinski had built a reputation as an elite instructor and his life started to take shape through his genuine love for teaching and coaching bowling. That passion took him many places in the US and the world, including a return trip to Hungary from 2005-06 as a part-time national coach. But he caught his big break later in 2006 when he was hired by the National Sports Council of Malaysia as a coach and trainer, where he helped develop the curriculum and programs in a country that held the sport under the Olympic banner.
 
During that time, Slowinski started thinking about bowling from a sports science, nutrition and programmatic perspective, and also began writing articles for well-known bowling publications. Since those stops in both Hungary and Malaysia, Slowinski has spent significant time in over 30 countries and worked with seven different national teams (Romania, Serbia, Brazil, Mexico, Lithuania, Belgium and Egypt), acquiring personal connections with athletes from all over the globe. The variety of experiences is something that Slowinski cherishes.
 
"It's a combination of seeing the world and meeting great people from all over the world, whether they are from Malaysia, Egypt, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Brazil or wherever," he said. "I know people from literally all over the world that share the same passion as I do, but you also get to know these people on a personal basis and see culture from a personal perspective, not from a tourist handbook. That's something very special. To give back to the sport by helping people do what they love, the personal gratification is off the charts."
 
After his tenure in Malaysia, Slowinski was hired at the world-renowned Kegel Training Center in Lake Wales, Florida, where he spent four years as a professional trainer while also starting the Webber International bowling program. That allowed him to return to his truest love – college bowling.
 
"College bowling is by far the greatest thing in bowling. It's the purest. There's something amazing about the purity of commitment and energy of college bowling. It is the greatest thing for our sport. Coming together to represent your school, there's something that is just truly magical about that. The gem of bowling is college bowling."
 
After building a national championship-contending program at Webber International, Slowinski took his talents back overseas for three years, visiting 19 countries on three continents in 2013 alone. But now he's right back doing what he enjoys the most: starting a college program from the ground up at Lincoln Memorial University.
 
"I love being part of LMU and I'm so pleased that they decided to bring bowling here. Getting to start the program from scratch is an awesome experience. Everything you give is what it's going to be; it's a reflection of you as well as the institution. If they don't have the commitment to make a great program, then it wouldn't be a good fit. But the vision of the institution says a lot with high academic quality and excellent athletics. I want to have a school where the parents who send their kids here fall in love with it too."
 
Throughout his life, Slowinski has never wanted to settle or become content, which he credits as a major reason for all of the opportunities that have been opened to him. In Lincoln Memorial's first season of competition, he guided the Lady Railsplitters to the championship match of the East Coast Conference Championship, but he has much, much loftier goals for the program. Slowinski wants to capture the first national championship in school history, and that's a vision that he pushes to his players on a daily basis.
 
"We want to be the first. I always try to find something that's going to motivate the group. I always talk about making college bowling history. How can we make college bowling history? To be the first title for this community, how powerful of a statement would that be? Our goal is to win a national title. To be the first at that, that's a motivator for everybody."
 
Bowling has opened the world to Slowinski and given him more than he could have ever expected as a child growing up on the frigid southeast coast of Maine. He's had the opportunity to travel the globe and develop lifelong friendships with people from all walks of life while playing a role in the growth of the sport. He's also gotten to experience all of the joys of college coaching: the cohesiveness of being a part of a team, the pursuit of accomplishments big and small, and the surrogate family atmosphere. Thanks to those things, Slowinski feels a responsibility to give back to the sport.
 
"I want to give people the opportunity to reach their goals and aspirations. To help people achieve what they want to achieve and keep that going so that future generations fall in love with the sport as well.
 
"I feel like I have a big obligation to help people know the sport at a deep level. When people come here and leave, I expect that they know the sport at a high level so that they can contribute to other people later. We want to help educate so bowling can be better in the future. We have an obligation to do that."
 
Slowinski took an up and down, winding road all the way to Harrogate, Tennessee. From a toddler spending his days in the local bowling alley in Portland, Maine to walking the halls of a school in Hungary to the training facilities in Malaysia, the accumulation of all of Slowinski's experiences have helped him become the coach he is today. And bowling was always there to pull him along.
    
"I don't have a straight path, but I feel like I'm a much better person and coach because of that."