Meet ice bowling ball candidates Melanie Stewart, Dr. Myron Toews

On Thursday and Friday of last week, UNMC featured two candidates in Friday’s Skate-a-thon for Parkinson’s Human Ice Bowling contest — Rick Boldt and Erin Rosenbaugh — which led to grumbles from other candidates.

Bowling ball candidate Tom O’Connor gets in a practice run at the UNMC Ice Rink.

So in the interest of fairness, we’ll focus on the other candidates this week.

Today we meet Melanie Stewart and Myron Toews, Ph.D.

Stewart’s ice bowling strategy, ‘No strategy’

Apparently, Melanie Stewart, resources manager in the Durham Research Centers and director of the UNMC LiveGreen initiative, has not completely thought through this whole human bowling ball thing.

Melanie Stewart

When asked what her strategy is as one of the eight campus celebrities who seek to be bowling balls in the contest, she replied, “That’s a good question.”

But she conceded this much, “I guess I better pick the people who push me down the ice carefully.”

Her duties on campus should give Stewart a pretty strong constituency to contribute to her cause.

“I work with research and facilities and LiveGreen, so that should give me access to so many people who want to see me thrown across the ice,” she said.

Dr. Toews not above shameless self promotion

Myron Toews, Ph.D.

In the signature of every email sent by Myron Toews, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and experimental neuroscience, is the line from Irish poet James Joyce: “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”

This seems like a perfect time to point out that Dr. Toews has volunteered himself as a human bowling ball.

To garner support for his campaign, Dr. Toews will appeal directly to students. He plans to attend classes and lectures in a red Nebraska cowboy hat and brandish a red bowling ball.

And if all else fails he will shamelessly tug at your heart strings in order to make it onto the ice.

“I have a grandson who would love the idea of his grandpa being a bowling ball,” he said.