What’s the first thing you do when meeting a new roommate?
You know the usual awkward first few days of getting to know the person your living with, well that was not the case for Khailla Onojeta, a junior majoring in business management here at Grambling State University.
I had the pleasure of being her roommate, so a talk with her was also like an ice-breaker for us.
Khailla is a member of OBB and is on the school bowling team. I asked her about where the idea of bowling for sport came from and she informed me that she had been on the bowling team in her high school for 2 years and when she arrived here at Grambling, she sat out of the team her first year because she didn’t know if freshmen were welcomed on the team.
Now honestly, I knew Grambling had a bowling team, I assumed that they went over to LA Tech to practice on there lanes. I asked her about it and Khailla said, “We have an alley with 8 lanes to practice on.”
It was mindboggling, Grambling always seems to surprise me. Khailla explained that the alley is down the hall from the help desk in the book store and her coach is thinking about letting regular students use it, but that is still up for discussion. We got deeper into conversation and I found Khailla to be a very bright and nice person. She has plans to own her own bakery, but first she wants to work under someone that owns one to get a feel of how things will be when she ventures out on her own.
When asked about the bowling team, you can see that Khailla enjoys it very much. She informed me that she joined in the Fall of 2017 and she got the idea from one of her line sisters who was already on the team. It was then she had a talk with the coach and a couple weeks later the team of three became four. She didn’t believe how quick the process was but was very thankful that she was accepted by the team. I asked her about how she felt this season would go for the bowling team and she that they will do better than they did last season because of the new additions to the team. She Expressed that once everyone got into a routine then everything else would fall into place.
Once we got past the bowling talk, I asked if she saw herself taking bowling further than just college. She said that she hopes to continue on through her graduate studies playing on the team if possible but for now she’s just enjoying the time she has with her team now.
When asked what has bowling done for her Khailla said, “I have had the chance to travel to different states and I had the opportunity to meet new and incredible people. When going to meets we interacted with other teams. We even started a group chat ‘Black girls Bowl’ and that’s how we keep up with one another.”