American Joe Slowinski has spent a lifetime turning raw bowling talent into true international contenders.

Slowinski has coached in 48 countries and has guided players on to the podium at major Games around the world. With more than 3,000 athletes to have trained under his watchful eyes, he has seen and done it all and got the bowling T-shirt.

Since January the 59-year-old is spending much of his time travelling to Bermuda and helping the island’s best prepare for the Central American and Caribbean Games next month and he is excited to help the team attempt to fulfil their potential.

“I’m always looking for opportunities because I like coaching in different countries, leaving a legacy behind and helping them improve,” Slowinski said.

“Very few places have full-time bowlers and Bermuda is obviously no different. In their last couple of tournaments they were not very good and near the bottom at the World Championships.

“I can tell the top players have potential, but they need a lot more knowledge, understanding and also to stretch their skills, which is what I’m doing now.

“We’ve had a number of great sessions and you can teach an old dog new tricks. If you’ve got a lot of experience, had success and can repeat well enough, then I can pass on my techniques for strategy, lane play and bowling-ball choices.

“World-class caddies are very important on the bag, right? They know golf well and they understand the player and this is no different. Preparation is my best asset as a coach.”

Like most top coaches, Slowinski is unwilling to place a figure or a finishing position on the Bermuda team’s display at the forthcoming CAC Games in Dominican Republic, instead preferring to focus on the process.

“I’ve sat in front of federations that are going to the Olympics and refused to predict a number in terms of medals and performance,” Slowinski said.

“They didn’t like that very much. Let’s take the Bermuda team. We can bowl the best that we’ve ever bowled at the CAC Games and not win a damn thing. That’s the hard part and I hate them thinking about it because expectations are toxic to the mind.

“There are a lot of good bowling nations at the Games, a lot of successful countries and all we can do is be prepared to be at our best. When I’m here, I know I'm going to get more out of everybody just because I know what buttons to push.

Coaching is a lot about understanding human nature and getting them to be more disciplined but process is the key, it's like El Dorado in itself. It's the elixir of getting the chance to be successful because you can’t control the outcomes, all you can do is give yourself an opportunity.

“I want to get up on the podium, I want to hear the national anthems and that’s the best feeling of your life. I know all the hard work that they put in but it’s never guaranteed.”

Slowinski will be writing a column for The Royal Gazette in the build-up to the Games in an attempt to show just how big the leap is from playing at Warwick Lanes on a Saturday afternoon to competing for your country on the international stage.

“People participate in conditions that are very easy,” Slowinski said.

“You can hit the ball in lots of different ways and it still goes close to the pocket, but if you did that at our level, you would score under 100. We suffer from the perception that people think they’re better at this game than they actually are.

“This game is like golf in that you have to have specific clubs for specific shots and specific courses. Bowling is like that and we have equipment that needs to match different zones of the lane and the environment.

“We need to know whether it hooks slower or later and that creates different shaping, which is really important in bowling.

“The other side is like thinking like tennis. If I practised on a US Open hard court all the time, when I went and played Wimbledon or the French Open, I wouldn’t be very good as I have to have different tension of the strings, I have to hit the ball differently and shape different shots. It’s the same in bowling.”

But for now Slowinski is focusing as much on the mental side of the game as the physical, with mindset playing a crucial role in separating the elite players from the rest of the world.

“I’m a big believer in applied sports psychology,” Slowinski said.

“You don’t intentionally become a bad team-mate by being disappointed because you made a bad shot, but if you make a bad shot two things can happen that are negative. One is your team-mates look at you like they’re disappointed in you or you turn around and you’re angry.

“That's not acceptable so I am training the players in acceptance amnesia. Once the ball is in, nothing can be done.

“We’ve got to move on because we've got to work and you have to announce that as the expectation. A lot of times if you are coaching players that are not used to being that disciplined, we've got bad problems.”