When it comes to sports, bowling is not Cody Sugai’s first choice.

As a matter of fact, had it not been for a traumatic and debilitating stroke he suffered in 2010 as a fourth-grader, Sugai would not have chosen bowling at all.

Yet, the senior at Hawaii Baptist Academy is dedicated to knocking down pins for the Eagles’ varsity team. It feeds the fire of his sporting ambition, a fervor he developed in youth baseball and basketball.

“Cody is very competitive,” Eagles coach Greg Hayashi said. “He has the desire within himself to do well. When he picked up bowling, he had that exact same desire. He wanted to learn the sport well and become good at it. It’s the one thing that he can do. There’s that perseverance he has, staying with something that is new with his disability. He has used all of his physical and mental capabilities to overcome everything, and he has a lot of support from his parents, coaches and teammates.”

The stroke severely affected the left arm of the now 17-year-old Sugai, and his left leg is much weaker than his right.

“Baseball and basketball, that was basically my whole life,” he said. “Every Saturday, every weekend, from day into night.”

Now, Sugai can only swing a bat with his right arm and, he said, “It’s shaky.” He also said that he can catch Wiffle ball grounders and throw with his right hand, and he plays some pickup hoops games.

But what he can’t do is not nearly as important as what he can do, and that happens on the lanes, where he has a 147 average and a high game of 236, and in school, where he is a leader and a highly active student-athlete.

“He’s right-handed, meaning his slide foot is his left foot,” Hayashi said. “It was challenging for Cody because he can’t put full weight on the left side after he releases the ball. He worked super hard and really fell in love with bowling. He went through all the trials of throwing gutter balls. We have a lot of people who come in thinking they can’t bowl, but the time they leave the program, they’ve turned out to be pretty good bowlers.”

And that is one of the reasons Sugai joined. It helped that Hayashi’s wife, Lynne, who is a librarian and bowling coach at the school, is a first cousin of Sugai’s mom, Jeanette. It also helped that one of Sugai’s friends was on the bowling team and they went to activity sign-up day together, when it dawned on them that the sport may work for him.

“After I had my stroke, because I was so involved in sports, I wanted to get back into that competitive mode,” he said. “Being at HBA, the history of the bowling program was so high, I was like, ‘Why not try bowling?’ And now, the thing I like about HBA is they teach bowlers how to bowl. There are only a few on our teams who were bowlers before. The majority have come out and HBA made us into bowlers. When I started, I was thinking it’s just bowling, just throw the ball down the lane. But it’s fascinating. You learn how elaborate bowling really is.”

Sugai’s memories of the actual stroke incident are foggy, but have been relayed to him, mostly through his mom. He recalls going to school that day and hearing his dad, Scott, tell him that he would pick him up for baseball practice later. He remembers having a migraine and going to the school’s health office.

“After that, honestly, I don’t remember any of it,” he said. “I never made it to baseball practice. My mom told me that the migraine became so intense and I started to throw up and I started screaming for her. She drove me to the hospital in rush-hour traffic and she said I lost consciousness when we got to the door. Next thing I remember is being in the Kapiolani hospital recovery ward. I had been in a coma for 21⁄2 weeks. The next 21⁄2 months I was in the hospital having to relearn how to do the simple things we often take for granted in life — walking, talking, sitting up in bed, drinking water.”

Sugai is a counselor at HBA’s grade-level camps, is involved in an academic competition called Science Olympiad and sings in the Soldiers of Light choir at the school.

“Cody loves to help people,” Hayashi said. “He does very well as a camp counselor. Whether it’s with the seventh- or eighth-graders or his peers in the senior class, he is able to relate to them. He is one of those model student-athlete leaders. Academics, athletics, he wants to do the best he can and be involved in school and care for the people he works with.”

Like many, Sugai puts the ability in disability.