Who dominates the digital lanes of the Nintendo Wii Bowling senior league? This year the four teammates of Bonney Lake Senior Center team Wii Be Bowling rolled into a tie for first in league with the Auburn Senior Stars.

The dream team of strikers strutted around the senior center with their league champion T-shirts after discovering they had won the league honors on March 31. Both Wii Be Bowling and the Senior Stars won 17 out of 18 games.

“We knew that we had lost a game to them, and that they had lost a game to us,” Bonney Lake Bowler Judy Swain said. “But other than that we didn’t know what their record was like. It’s funny that the only games either of us lost were to each other.”

The Bonney Lake champions, one of three teams out of the city’s senior center, are comprised of Swain, Lillian Clark and husband-and-wife bowlers Bonnie and Wayne Johnson.

A win in league came as a surprise to the team because they had finished third in the final tournament. But a final tally of the scores revealed that they were tied to be top dogs of the 18 teams in the league.

The league was formed in 2007 after Senior Services Manager Sue Hilberg was approached by her counterparts in Tukwila and Burien with the idea of creating a competition around the Wii sport. Hilberg had recently acquired one of the Nintendo consoles after a member brought in a news article showing how popular the games were at a retirement community in Illinois. Only a handful of teams from Pierce and parts of King County competed at first, but the league has since grown.

Each of the Bonney Lake champions began their competitive careers at the league’s inception three years ago, after trying out the Senior Center Wii and being approached to join by Hilberg.

“I got so hooked on playing I told my kids I was going to buy one with my $300 (stimulus check) from the government that year,” Swain said. “But they decided to get me one for my birthday.”

“I generally don’t like video games besides playing with this,” Wayne Johnson said. “But I like this one because it’s a lot like real bowling.”

“Except it’s certainly for everybody,” wife Bonnie Johnson said. “The activity is a lot lighter so everyone can play.”

“Even ladies in wheelchairs can compete,” Wayne Johnson said.

The season wasn’t absent of injuries. In one game, Bonnie Johnson suffered one of the Wii’s infamous joint injuries in her right shoulder, a case of arthralgia caused by vigorous motion with no counterweight. But she played through the pain by bowling the game left-handed.

Clear rivalries with the Senior Stars and Enumclaw Senior Center’s team came up over the course of the season, but the real pleasure in competition came from making friends at the other senior centers, the Wii Be bowlers agreed.

“Everybody is really friendly with each other,” Wayne Johnson said. “And if I see somebody on another team doing something wrong, I’ll help them out. But we have some friends on other teams who will see us coming and starting teasing us right off the bat. It’s all a lot of fun.”

Official team practice and competition are limited to the season from October to March, but the Wii Be bowlers like to keep their wrists limber at off-season practices on Friday as well as at home. Swain practices once or twice a week in addition to Friday practice, usually when there’s nothing good on television, she said.

“We’re going to compete next year,” Wayne Johnson said. “And we’ll be ready.”