Backstory: Bowling on real lanes

In a quiet West Virginia field, Mark Wilt is flat on his stomach, up to his elbows in muck. He's lost his ball, not a Titleist or Top Flite, but a steel cannonball. He rolled it down Turkey Run Road, watched it veer from the center, thud over cracks in the tar, careen across some shoulder till, and end up below a bridge in a muddy stream.

Actually, that's what the ball is supposed to do, except for the off-road detour. "Now this is dedicated road bowling," laughs John Nelson, as Mr. Wilt fishes around unsuccessfully for his ball, or "bowl," as it's called, for about 10 minutes.

The scene is hardly unusual in one of America's newest and most obscure sports – Irish road bowling – where the errant cannonballs often end up in fields, rivers, and even cow patties. These are just a few of the hazards along rural lanes where the sport is played with passion and a strange kind of precision.

Though the sport remains the playground of a relatively few, it is gaining in popularity in the hills of central West Virginia, where residents of the appropriately named town of Ireland first brought it back a decade ago. This year, organizers are trying to bring the game to a new level by hosting the North American championships and – they hope – sending a West Virginian overseas to the All-Ireland games this fall for the first time.

"We want to play our way to Ireland," says David Powell, the West Virginia club's founder and an avid – albeit by his own admission average – road bowler. Mr. Powell fell in love with the game because of its simplicity, aesthetics, and tradition. "It's so easy to learn, and so hard to get good at," he says. "It's older than baseball or football – it dates back to the 1600s."

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The needs in road bowling are few: a small steel cannonball, 28 ounces. Some chalk. A winding country road, preferably with a few hills, that hasn't been repaved in a while.

The rules are more like golf than bowling: Participants – either competing alone or in two- or four- person teams – try to get to the end of the course in the fewest number of bowls possible. Usually the course is one to two miles long. Any throwing style is legal, but most bowlers use a running start and an underhanded toss. A road spotter stands ahead to indicate the best path. A chalk mark is placed on the road where the bowl stops.

Good bowlers read the curves and ridges of the road, and get bowls of several hundred yards. Bad ones, as in indoor bowling, roll their balls into the gutter – in this case, brambles and brooks – after 10 or 20 feet.

While virtually unknown in the US, road bowling has been around in Ireland for centuries, especially in County Cork in the south and Armagh in the north. Each has a distinct style of play: The Cork bowlers tend to swing their arm around in a full circle before hurling the bowl, while the Amargh players run with their arm straight back and toss without a windup. On Sundays, whole towns will often turn out to watch.

A native of Ireland, W.Va., who now lives in the Washington D.C. area, Powell first learned of the sport from a TV clip and later looked for bowls during a trip to Ireland. He thought it would be perfect for his home state, rich in hills and country roads, and for the town of Ireland's annual Irish Spring Festival.

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