Every Friday night from autumn until springtime in the basement bar and lounge beneath Riverhead\u2019s Polish Hall, one of the most colorful parties in town unfolds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the Friday night ladies\u2019 bowling league, the last active league in a Polish Hall tradition that stretches back at least into the 1950s, when the lounge hosted league play five nights a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The women in the ladies\u2019 league are not run-of-the-mill retirees. This is a tight-knit, lighthearted group of older women who gather at the end of the week to laugh, drink, gamble, gossip and dance \u2014 as the saying goes \u2014 like nobody\u2019s watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They bowl, too, but it seems such an incidental part of the party that it feels like a cover story, though it’s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are women who bowl well into their late 80s; who bowl through pregnancies and cancer and chemo, who replace aging teammates that pass away with daughters and neighbors \u2014 and keep the league alive simply because it\u2019s so much fun. Yet each year it gets harder to find new members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m one of the newer ones,\u201d said nine-year league veteran Marsha Mongiori of Calverton. \u201cThey recruited me from the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She assured anyone interested in joining the league that no bowling skill is required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no pressure. You don\u2019t have to be a great bowler. You never feel like, \u2018Oh I bowled crappy, so I let them down.’ We dance, we sing, we show pictures of our grandchildren. It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlus,\u201d she confided with a sly side eye, \u201cwe do a little illegal gambling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two lanes down, women in matching, embroidered purple shirts danced and shimmied to Elvis Presley\u2019s \u2018Jailhouse Rock,\u2019 just one hit on a league-approved jukebox playlist that spans decades \u2014 from Little Richard, Ray Charles and Nancy Sinatra to Led Zeppelin, The Pointer Sisters and John Mellencamp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great night out,\u201d said Karen Hartmann of Calverton. \u201cWe got the music, the drinks, the food, a great group of ladies \u2014 what more could you want on a Friday night?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like many of the dozen women interviewed, Tiffany Gibbons said she was lured into the league as a fill-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was 2001 and \u201cthere was a woman on one of the teams who had to have knee surgery, so they needed a replacement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time the patient was back on her feet, Ms. Gibbons had her spot. \u201cThe captain of my team didn\u2019t want to let me go!\u201d The returning bowler was dispatched to another team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat I love most about this is that it\u2019s private,\u201d Ms. Gibbons said. \u201cWe can play our music, drink, snack, gamble. And it doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re bowling. It feels like we\u2019re getting together to get together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms. Gibbons said that bowling is an intergenerational sport in her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the early 1990s, when leagues lit up the bowling lanes five nights a week, her father John bowled for the Masons, a team with matching, embroidered jackets. Her mother Sharon has been bowling in the Friday night ladies\u2019 league for nearly 40 years, the last 34 of them as league secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tiffany Gibson\u2019s son, 13, and daughter, 7, each bowl in leagues of their own in Port Jefferson, she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve bowled through two pregnancies, and all these women came to my baby showers,\u201d Tiffany Gibbons said. \u201cI bowled right up to the day I gave birth. I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I bowled through that, through the chemo, and all the stuff. (Last week, she said, her mammogram results \u201ccame back clear.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAny of these women I could call, and I know they\u2019d be there for me. I feel like I\u2019m the baby here, and they are all my moms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n