Some people do not take losing very well. Others, however, do not take it all. Shelley Hanson, captain of the winning team at the United States Bowling Congress Storm Mixed Team Challenge in Milwaukee on Sunday, is one of the people who do not take it at all.

After bowling poorly at the Mixed Team Challenge event in Addison, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, the day before, where her team finished in third place despite her struggles, Hanson loaded the car that same night for a trip to Milwaukee and a chance at bowling redemption. The third place prize she and her team had won that day seemed like little more than a matter of unfinished business-a matter they would settle when the Mixed Team Challenge moved from Addison to Milwaukee the next day.

"I felt a lot of pressure, you don't want to let them down," Hanson said of her teammates. "We came in third in Chicago and I bowled really bad. So we actually bowled Chicago and then drove over to Milwaukee that night to bowl there."

They had plenty of money to cover the gas by Sunday night, as Hanson's B & B Bowl team finished with a total pinfall of 5,119 that put them over the top by just 34 pins and earned the team a $1,200 payday. Baker scores of 273 and 287 were enough to keep the second-place team, New Berlin Heating, within 10 pins of B & B Bowl up to the last game, but a low score of 173 held them back.

"I wanted the ring," a chuckling Hanson said of the championship rings awarded to Mixed Team Challenge winners. "I figured I'll never have a 300 ring, so this is the only bowling ring I'm ever gonna get."

But Carlos Velasquez, who captained the winning team at the event in Addison where Shelley Hanson's B & B Bowl came up a couple of places short on Saturday, had a lot more than rings and baker scores to consider when he came to Addison's Stardust Lanes that day - and none of it had anything to do with bowling.

"When I am bowling I forget about everything else - work, home, everything else," Velasquez explained.

With a 3-week-old baby joining 4-year-old twins at home and a full time job on top of the degree in criminal justice he is pursuing, there is plenty for Velasquez to forget about on the lanes. And with another teammate who rushed to the bowling center after working the night shift, there was no time better than now for Vasquez's 3 Kings & A Queen to cash a $1,300 check for first place.

"I almost didn't bowl this year because my wife was pregnant," Velasquez revealed. Consider his wife happy that he did, as 3 Kings & A Queen posted a total pin fall of 5,060 to win the tournament by a commanding margin of 124 pins. Their team score of 1,030 in the third game of qualifying was the only four-digit score in a field of 48 teams.

"Every time we talk about it, we get teary-eyed," Velasquez said of his team's reaction to their victory. "It was definitely not expected."

The Storm Mixed Team Challenge series returns on April 18 at Philadelphia's La Martinique Lanes and closes that weekend's events at Bowl America Glen Burnie Lanes in Baltimore the following day