ISELIN, N.J. — With eyes locked on the 10 pins standing at the end of the lane, Gabe Solomon picks up his white bowling ball and works through his approach.
He finds the target arrow just to the right of center lane at Bowler City in Hackensack. Then he takes four steps forward, rears back with both hands and fires the ball down the gleaming hardwood.
Seconds later: Strike! His ball blasts the pins in all directions.
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Solomon spins around to celebrate, pumping his fists. But no one is there to join him.
No friends. No teammates. No peers.
The isolation has become the norm for Gabe, a junior with learning disabilities, including Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. The 16-year-old attends a special education school in Whippany that does not offer sports programs. State athletic association rules stipulate that if a high school does not have a particular sports team, an athlete can then compete for the school in their home district. But in this case, the school in Solomon’s district, Columbia High, does not have a bowling team.
As a result, Gabe has been reduced to a bowler without a team, even as he’s become one of the state’s elite individual competitors, with a pair of 299 scores and a 767 three-game series to his credit.
“It’s unfair,” said Natalie Picow, Gabe’s mom. “He’s one of the top bowlers in New Jersey. I don’t understand why if there isn’t a team in your district they can’t carve out something for the athlete, whether it’s my son or someone else.”
Gabe’s situation has shined a light on challenges facing some high schoolers with disabilities. His family says teens like their son can be entangled in a labyrinth of bureaucracy just because they want to play like anyone else. And, in some cases, those kids can be left feeling even more isolated and alone.
The Solomons have petitioned the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association and contacted local athletic officials seeking help. They credit bowling — a game he stumbled upon five years ago — with giving Gabe Solomon confidence and purpose, while opening his life to a social scene he had never experienced.
That’s why they’ve made it their mission to fight for their son’s inclusion on a high school team — for him, but also for other kids who may be in a similar situation.
“This is his peer group,” said Solomon’s father, Michael. “For him to be excluded from his peer group because of a rule and refusal to really examine the rule, it’s put my son in this awful position — and I’m sure countless other kids, too. It’s unfair, wrong and unnecessary.”
The NJSIAA, meanwhile, said its proverbial hands are tied. It can’t break its own rules to accommodate a single bowler. Even if it was possible to make an exception, it could open the door for other athletes in other sports to take advantage of the rule.
“Interscholastic rules ensure students with special needs have equal — not extra — opportunities,” NJSIAA spokesman Mike Cherenson said in a statement.
It’s cold comfort to Gabe, whose latest predicament is only the latest in a lifetime of challenges.
‘Bowling improved everything’
They called it their bowling safari, but it really was just a road trip from South Orange to Philadelphia. Along the way, Michael and Gabe Solomon stopped at as many bowling alleys as possible as they trekked down the New Jersey Turnpike this summer in pursuit of strikes and cheesesteaks.
The sport has taken the father-son duo across the Midwest and as far as Las Vegas and North Carolina, as Gabe rounded into a top bowler who twice has won the King of Hill Tournament at Lodi Lanes.
But it all started as just an idea to kill boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking for anything to get out of the house in 2021, Michael Solomon took his son, then 12, to bowl at nearby Eagle Rock Lanes in West Orange. Gabe was instantly taken by the sport. During one of their outings, they met Ken Yokobosky, the bowling coach at Caldwell University, who became Gabe’s mentor and Anthony Parisi, who steered Gabe to a private league.
It marked a major life development for Gabe, who, before discovering bowling, spent hours hidden in his bedroom. He was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade, then ADHD. Gabe had a few friends, struggled in school and lacked confidence, his parents said.
His learning disabilities caused him to struggle academically, a problem only exacerbated during the pandemic.
When Gabe returned to public school after the COVID shutdown, South Orange-Maplewood special services offered he attend The Calais School, which caters to students with learning disabilities and mood and behavior disorders. The family jumped at the opportunity, only later realizing the school didn’t offer sports.
Once Gabe started bowling, it was like flipping a light switch. Suddenly, he had purpose, identity and goals to achieve.
“It just built his confidence and helped everything in his life, including his schoolwork,” Michael Solomon said.
His mom estimated her son spends about 25 hours a week participating in tournaments or league competition from East Hanover to North Brunswick.
“He has a social circle like he never had before,” Michael Solomon added. “He has self-confidence like he never had before. Bowling has just improved everything.”
Bowling has even made Gabe unique. Unlike most bowlers, he uses a two-hand technique.
The best two-handed bowler? That’s Jason Belmonte, who is the only player to record three televised 300 games on the PBA Tour. His poster is plastered on Gabe’s bedroom wall. Gabe studies his YouTube clips and hopes to bowl his first 300 soon like his hero. Gabe has two career games with a 299 score and missed a stubborn 10 pin in one of them.
“Tragic,” he says.
He rattles off the names of friends who bowl for their high school teams, several for nearby West Orange High, which won the Essex County championship last winter.
“My perfect ending to this would be to be on a team with my friends,” Gabe Solomon said.
‘A lot of layers’
Gabe was at the alley on a late September day bowling a prequalifying score for one of several leagues in which he participates.
He rolled a 196 in his first of six games. He upped it to 208 in his second.
His dad sat at a table behind the ball return, charting his son’s shots on his iPhone and offering his best advice.
Since Gabe is not on a high school team, this winter will mark the third that he’s spent his afternoons alone rolling frame after frame in pursuit of his individual goals. Solomon will bowl in leagues across North Jersey — sometimes against competition 40 years his senior — and try to get his scores high enough to qualify as one of the state’s 100 best high school bowlers.
Still, when his growing circle of friends he has met through the sport put on their high school bowling shirts, Solomon just wears one of his favorite hoodies and covers his bushy hair with a “Storm” brand bowling hat.
“There are a lot of layers to this, but at the heart of it is a father that loves his son,” said West Orange athletic director Stephan Zichella, who was approached about Gabe joining his school’s team. “I feel for him and would like to see him have the opportunity to experience all the good that interscholastic sports have to offer.”
But it won’t happen at West Orange, which is unable to form a co-operative agreement, according to Zichella.
Over the last year, Gabe and his parents successfully petitioned the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education to have a chaperone from Columbia High present so he could satisfy the NJSIAA’s rules and attend the individual state tournament.
They also pleaded with Columbia’s former and current athletic directors to start a bowling team or form a co-operative agreement with a coexisting team or neighboring high school. In response, the school said it put out a survey to gauge interest, but did not find enough to merit forming a team.
Columbia’s athletic director and superintendent did not respond to emails or phone messages from NJ Advance Media seeking comment.
Meanwhile, the NJSIAA says it’s following established rules in its constitution. According to the organization’s bylaws, a student-athlete cannot join another team without a co-operative agreement in place between school districts. The NJSIAA closely monitors co-ops, and a five-person committee approves which schools and programs can merge. It’s a common practice in hockey, with multiple schools forming one co-operative team.
“The NJSIAA is in the right position,” Nutley athletic director Joe Piro said. “The father wants to say, ‘Look, I’ll take him to Nutley, West Orange or Belleville.’ But you open up Pandora’s box when you do that, and you can’t close it. The rules are constitutionally driven.”
The NJSIAA declined to elaborate on the specifics of Solomon’s case, beyond its one-sentence response.
Still, Gabe and his parents said there’s something missing from his high school experience. Even though he still gets to bowl as an individual, there’s a camaraderie in being a part of a high school team.
“People say, ‘Well, it’s only four years of high school,’” Michael Solomon said. “Well, it’s his only four years of high school. That’s how I feel about it, and something should be done about it.”
Back at the bowling alley in September, Gabe focused intently on his next approach, eyes locked ahead. As he rolled another strike, he never even realized what was staring back at him halfway down his field of vision.
There, in the distance, hung a blue banner for the Paramus High School bowling team.
Two lanes down, a white banner for the Fort Lee High Bridgemen.
Another lane to the left, one from Hackensack High.
All around him, reminders of what he’s missing.
A team.
“I’m jealous,” Gabe said.
He pushed the frustration aside and kept bowling. Team or not, he has goals to accomplish, even if he has to chase them alone.
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