After settling for second place at provincials on three occasions between 2010 and 2015, local bowler Renée Laframboise finally cleared the hurdle in 2016, capturing her first Ontario Open Women’s Singles title that spring.
That boost of confidence for someone who had been in the mix for quite some time would pay dividends as Laframboise followed with bronze (2017), gold (2018) and silver (2019), continuing to hit the podium with regularity.
We all know the story of the 2020 pandemic year and its impact on virtually everything, but for this very talented ball thrower who walked away with gold at both the Open Women’s Nationals and Masters Nationals last month, there was more to the story.
Something was off.
“Last year was probably my worst year ever,” said the 35-year-old local chiropractor. “I was having kind of a crisis of confidence. Never before have I felt, as I got on the lane, that I don’t know what’s about to happen. I didn’t know which version of me would show up.
“If it’s the good version, it’s going to be a good game. If it’s the not so good version, it could get interesting really fast.”
Thankfully for Laframboise, Sudbury is an environment ripe with budding sport psychologists, with Laurentian University serving as a forerunner in the field decades ago.
“I’ve done a lot of work on the mental part,” she said. “I know that I can shoot, that’s never been a problem. This year, I tried to focus on if I throw a bad ball, just throw a better ball the next time. You are going to throw some crappy frames. It’s what you do after that which is going to determine how the game will go.”
With a 21-game average that exceeded 280, it’s a pretty safe bet that Laframboise did not experience “crappy frames” all that often as she earned her first ever medal at Canadian Championships in early June in Edmonton.
“I did bowl out of my mind for 21 games,” she laughed. “I will 100 per cent own that.”
Equally remarkable is the fact she did it some three hours after leading a Northern Ontario Ladies team of five first-timers to a bronze medal.
And just to put a little icing on the cake, Laframboise would finish second** in the Ladies Singles event at Canadian Masters just a few weeks later, besting a field that she described as a “murderers’ row” of top-end talent, with no less than five of the seven remaining athletes laying claim to a national crown in the past.
With more than 10 previous appearances at the cross-country playdowns on her resume, Laframboise had never garnered a medal.
Now she has three.
It’s been quite a summer for a young woman who was exposed to the game organically in her youth — her parents were the proud owners of Whitewater Lanes from 1990 until 2014 or so. Not that this guaranteed immediate success.
“As a kid, I never made it to nationals and people are always shocked to find that out,” she said.
“Back in the day, we had Holiday Lanes, we had Notre Dame Bowl, we had Lively — we had all kinds of centres. It was really hard to get out of the Sudbury region and go to provincials, much less a national.”
Completing her postgraduate chiropractic studies in upstate New York, Laframboise stepped away from serious bowling competition in 2013/2014, despite having shown signs of high-end potential as she reached her late teens. At the age of 18, she qualified for the TSN Pins Game final at roughly the same time she was beginning her undergraduate degree in Kinesiology at LU.
Back home in 2015, she returned to bowling without missing a beat.
“I have always been, well since I moved back, I have always been a contender,” she said. “I was one of those bowlers that folks thought could win. And I am never going to bet against myself. I know I have the ability and was always around.”
It was just a matter of breaking through, something that Laframboise has now done twice, in recent years, as she continues to pursue excellence on the lanes.
Randy Pascal is a sportswriter in Sudbury. Pursuit is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
**Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Laframboise placed first at this event. That has been corrected to state she placed second.
