Slow Roller Knocks ‘Em Down Despite Age, Poor Sight, Clinton Carries Her Own In The Alleys

When 88-year-old Ellen Clinton picks up her bowling ball off the rack return, all she can see is a green blur. That’s the color of her ball.

Clinton is blind in her left eye and can barely see out of her right eye. She has macular degeneration disease, a hardening of the arteries behind the retina.

When she throws the ball, she relies on 57 years of experience to get it down the lane.

But Clinton, who doesn’t look a day over 65, still is good enough to beat a 22-year-old rookie sportswriter.

In a match against her younger opponent on her home lane, Clinton rolled - a sub-par 135 to beat her confident challenger.

Although she only knocked down 10 more pins - 135-125 - the match resembled Eastern Washington playing Notre Dame in football in South Bend, Ind.

Clinton unleashed every ball with poise and confidence and threw four spares and a strike, despite facing two splits in the first two frames.

“I can see the pins, but I can’t see where I throw it,” Clinton said. “I guess since I’ve been doing it so long I just know where to throw the ball.”

Her secret is throwing the ball nice and easy, not trying to overpower the lane.

“Men should watch women. Men think they have to throw the ball hell-bent for an election,” Clinton said. “They don’t. You can do just as good throwing it easy.”

Men aren’t the only ones who can learn from Clinton.

“She has such a good attitude,” North Bowl assistant manager and league coordinator Donna Kerst said. “Everybody just loves her. She never has a negative thought.”

Clinton still carries an average of 142 and had a high game of 209, bowled last year.

That’s just a few pins below her all-time high game of 257. She bowled that in 1982 when she was 72.

Most women’s league bowlers average 140-150, Kerst said, and their average age is about half Clinton’s.

“I had a 157 average for years, but as I’ve gotten older, it has gotten lower and lower,” Clinton said.

Clinton was born in Copeland, Idaho, in 1906, and has lived in Spokane since she was 13, attending North Central High School.

She started bowling in 1938 after watching her second husband, George Astelford, bowl at the old Bolero establishment alley on Sprague. She bowled at Imperial Lanes in 1959 and then on to North Bowl in 1964, where she has been since. Currently, Clinton bowls in the Blue Monday and Pin Wheel Ladies leagues.

“I’ve only taken two years off since 1938. In 1941 to be an Air Devil and in 1945 to have a child,” she said.

Bowling became a family outing when her son, Dick Astelford, and her two daughters, Linda Simmons and Shirley Simonson, started bowling when they graduated from high school.

The daughters have since quit, but her son still bowls in two leagues. Astleford bowls in one league with his son, Dean. His wife, Pat, fills in for Dean as a substitute.

“None of us bowled until we got out of high school,” Astleford said. “My dad used to say you can bowl as soon as you can get a job and pay for it.”

When her husband died 30 years ago, Ellen remarried Russ Clinton, a retired field engineer for the Burroughs Corp. However, she still hasn’t convinced him to become a bowler.

Although Ellen Clinton hasn’t bowled in a tournament in at least 10 years, she and 30 to 35 of her senior citizen bowling companions take two trips every year to bowling alleys around the Northwest to compete against other seniors.

This May, they will take a bus across the state to Ocean Shores.

Clinton plans to keep bowling as long as her sight holds out.

“I love to bowl,” she said. “I don’t want to end up being a person who sits around the house the whole day.”

With her ambition and energy, that’s not likely to happen.