Team Colorado profiles: bowler Sharon Stump

Sharon Stump started bowling in tournaments when she and her partner decided to diversify their group of friends. What she got was a chance to meet people from all around the country and an excuse to travel the world.

"I got into bowling after getting into a relationship and realizing we didn't have any male friends anymore," Stump says.

She and her partner joined a gay bowling league in 1997, hoping to solve the problem. After that, she made friends with both men and women she met on bowling tournaments.

Stump went to her first Gay Games in 2002, in Sydney, Australia, and it was there that she met the women who will be her teammates this year in Cologne. They live in San Francisco and New Jersey. In bowling, a team has four members.

Stump and her teammates are funding their own trip to Germany, and like many other Colorado athletes who are heading to the Gay Games, Stump isn't in it for medals.

"For me, it's not as much about the competition as it is meeting people you would never get an opportunity to meet," she says.

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Read the full profile at Out Front Colorado HERE.