Traverse City Record-Eagle

Bowling

February 27, 2009

Mom, daughter drive overnight for regional

BY DENNIS CHASE

TRAVERSE CITY -- Neither snow nor treacherous roads could keep Nikki Kauss from her appointed round Friday morning.

The Ewen-Trout Creek junior -- with her mother, Kathy, behind the wheel -- spent 10 hours traveling snow-covered roads late Thursday night and early Friday morning to make it to the start of the Division 3 bowling regional at Timber Lanes.

The trip from Ewen -- in the western Upper Peninsula -- normally takes seven hours.

"The roads were really bad," Kathy Kauss said. "Some weren't plowed at all."

Nikki Kauss, a two-sport winter athlete, had a basketball game Thursday night, which prevented her from leaving with her teammates earlier in the day. The Panthers, who are down to six players, lost to Dollar Bay.

During the game, Kauss injured her right hand -- her throwing hand in bowling. It was noticeably swollen Friday.

"I'm not really sure what happened," Kauss said. "I

went to screen a girl (got hit) and afterwards it really hurt. I couldn't make a fist after that.

"I can still bowl, though," she added laughing.

Turns out, her bowling team needed her, too. The squad has five members and without her would not have been able to contend in the team competition.

So Thursday night at 8:45, after the basketball game ended, Nikki and Kathy Kauss departed for Traverse City. A winter storm that had developed earlier in the evening made road conditions messy and visibility poor.

"We were going 35 to 45 (miles-per-hour) the entire trip," Kathy said. "A couple times I told Nikki, 'This is just crazy. What are we doing?" She said, 'It's not that bad, mom." I said, 'You want to drive?' She didn't say anything after that."

"I didn't know where we were or where we were going," Nikki admitted. "I've never been downstate before."

They reached the Mackinac Bridge at 3:15 a.m. and eventually pulled over in Mancelona for a break.

"We stopped for about 15 minutes," Kathy said. "I told her, 'I'm tired. I've got to stop.' So she set an alarm on the (cell) phone."

Nikki Kauss said she slept for just 21/2 hours on the trip.

"I got a little, but she needed help seeing so I stayed up," Nikki said.

They arrived in Traverse City at 6:45 a.m. -- 90 minutes before the team left its hotel for Timber Lanes.

An exhausted Nikki Kauss joined them.

And she wouldn't have had it any other way.

"I like both sports equally," she said of her decision to play in Thursday night's basketball game. "I knew I wanted to be at both. So I made it happen."

With her mother's help, of course.

"She wouldn't have it staying home," Kathy Kauss said.

In the end, Ewen-Trout Creek finished sixth, failing to qualify for the state finals.

But there's always next year. Kauss plans to compete in both winter sports again.

"Definitely," she said.

"You can't talk me out of it," she said, looking at her mother with a smile on her face.

"As long as she keeps up her grades," Kathy responded.

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