Steve Damon and Jacqueline Thomas cheer on their teammates during open dodgeball at the Downtown YMCA. She caught his eye after he nailed her in the head with a ball.

Jill Torrance / Arizona Daily Star

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You've cruised North Fourth Avenue on Thursday nights. You've perused online matchmaking sites. You've even succumbed to blind dates. So why can't you find love?

The problem with these dating gimmicks is that the more forced the situation, the less likely you are to meet somebody with whom you're compatible. That's according to Carolyn Hax, a Washington Post columnist whose relationship advice appears daily in the Star. So what should a single guy or gal in the Old Pueblo do?

"It drives single people absolutely crazy when you condense it to, 'Just stop looking and you'll find somebody,' " Hax said in a recent phone interview. "But if you're living a full and gratifying life, you're more likely to meet people that have the same idea of a full and gratifying life."

Hax recommends trying activities where you'll be surrounded by other single people but that aren't billed as avenues for matchmaking. Join a rock-climbing club or a kickball league, or take salsa lessons.

Chadwick McGinnis met his fiancee at a yoga class.

"There's a limit to who you can be at a bar," he said. "It's more dynamic meeting someone doing something you love."

Hax says it's all about being yourself.

"People who find you attractive in your normal stride are the ones that will find you attractive over the years," she said.

We spoke to three couples who would definitely agree.

You might say the first encounter between Steve Damon and Jacqueline Thomas was a painful one.

"I hit her in the head on accident," Steve says, grinning.

Steve and Jacqueline, at a Starbucks on a recent morning, say they were at dodgeball practice at the Downtown YMCA when the assault occurred.

"I think I was walking off the court, actually, and then I get popped in the side of the head," says Jacqueline, 21. "And there's him just lying on the floor, writhing in laughter."

Though they had chatted briefly before in their mutual group of dodgeball buddies, the smackdown was an excuse to exchange numbers and begin texting.

Steve, 25, who has been playing the sport for five years, is practically a dodgeball pro. Jacqueline has been playing for three years and can hold her own on the court.

"I had a bunch of friends going, and at first I was like, 'Dodgeball sounds just ridiculous,' " says Jacqueline. "But we really started liking the people there, and we thought we'd go back."

It may be a playground staple, but the sport can be brutal, Steve explains.

"You don't want to lose to your friends," he says. "It gets taken up a notch."

And what's worse than losing to your friends? Losing to your girlfriend.

"My friends are like, 'You can't lose to Jacqui!' " Steve laughs. "And if she rubs it in my face I'll be a sore loser."

But when it came to their relationship off the court, there was no dodging.

They are halfway through their coffees, and the couple say their romance has been slow but steady.

"I didn't really think much of it until three months later when I was like, 'Are we dating now?'" says Steve.

He admits he was first impressed by Jacqueline's athletic skill.

"I thought she was cool because she was a female that played. When guys will play, they'll drag their girlfriends out and they will just stay in the back and cower in fear. When I hit her in the head I thought, 'Oh, no, I'm in trouble,' but she just laughed it off, so I thought that was kind of neat."

Steve pauses, then adds with a smile, "The fact that she can throw harder than some of the guys out there was cool."

For their first date, the two saw the movie "Doom" and made fun of it the whole time.

"We have the same morbid sense of humor," says Steve.

Both also share a love for sports in general. They like to go bowling or play softball with friends when they're not pegging each other with dodgeballs.

Even their day jobs revolve around sports: Steve works at the Downtown YMCA and is in the Air Force Reserve, and Jacqueline works at Big 5 Sporting Goods. She plans on attending Pima Community College next semester.

When did they realize they were right for each other?

"I think when I got him back and popped him in the head," says Jacqueline, laughing.

"I realized there was a comfort there and I could be myself around her and not worry," Steve explains. "It was just a weird, mutual thing."

Steve and Jacqueline want to make it clear they didn't go to the dodgeball games hoping to pick up someone. It was the result of a friendly and casual atmosphere, they say.

"It's not like you're going to a bar — you're not trying to dress to impress," Jacqueline explains. "You're kind of letting yourself go and having fun and breaking down any barriers you've got."

As for the couple's future, they are approaching it like a casual pickup game of dodgeball.

"We're just going to see how it unfolds," says Jacqueline.

At first glance, a bowling alley doesn't appear to be a romantic hot spot. But evidently the lanes at Tucson's Lucky Strike Bowl are teeming with passion.

How many couples have met at the lanes?

"Oh, my lord, I can't even begin to tell you," says Jill Theis, who owns the bowling alley. "There's dozens."

In fact, before they started dating each other, Bob Bennett, 47, and Ginny Mobley, 54, were dating other people they had met while bowling.

Tucked away in a booth in the dim lounge of Lucky Strike Bowl, the now-engaged couple explain how they met about eight years ago in the same bowling league.

"I was breaking apart with my ex at the time," says Bob, a little shyly. "I kind of asked (Ginny) out, but she wasn't sure because I was actually still with someone. That's why we didn't get hooked up right away."

Undeterred by Ginny's hesitation, the two became friends over the next year and a half and saw a lot of each other at Lucky Strike, the bowling alley the couple call their home base.

And when Ginny was sure that things were over between Bob and his ex, she took him up on his offer to go out on a date.

The avid UA basketball fans spent the evening watching the Cats wipe the floor with the Sun Devils, and afterward headed over to — where else? — Lucky Strike.

Bob has bowled since he was 8 and now prides himself on his 208 average. Ginny has bowled since she was 19 and says she typically bowls in the 180s. It's safe to say games can get a little heated between these two.

"I do beat him sometimes but not very often lately. I've got to work on that," says Ginny.

After their first date, the two quickly discovered they had much more in common than their passion for bowling and college basketball.

"We were talking about food we liked," says Ginny, "and I said something about Lucky Wishbone and their cheeseburgers on garlic toast, and he finished my sentence. I didn't know anyone else knew about those things."

Ginny, who enjoys taking trips to Sedona every once in a while, realized that Bob also loves traveling.

"I've been going to El Novillo for 15 years or so," he says, taking a swig from his Budweiser. Bob leases a house in the little Mexican town and travels there about twice a year for fishing trips.

Bob proudly turns around in the booth to show off the back of his team bowling shirt, which is colored with the photo of a large 12-pound bass he caught on one of his trips.

The "engagement bass" that Bob hooked in El Novillo is another story.

"Do I have to tell it?" Bob pleads. Ginny nods yes as she holds out her hand, offering a better look at the diamond.

"I caught about a six-and-a-half-pound bass and I pretended I pulled the ring out of its mouth. She got all freaked out."

"It surprised the heck out of me," Ginny says.

The engagement happened last April, but the two say they're in no rush to get married. Bob is busy running his own screen-print business, and Ginny is busy as well working as a senior developer analyst for a health-care company.

Ginny has her colors already picked out — sage and peach — but the wedding location is still up in the air.

Theis said in her 47 years of owning the bowling alley there have been about six weddings at Lucky Strike.

Any chance that Bob will walk Ginny down a lane at Lucky Strike Bowl instead of the aisle of a church?

"The idea was tossed around," says Ginny.

Chadwick McGinnis was hiking in Cochise Stronghold, delirious with fever, when he proposed to Anjani Visan.

The couple are seated at an outside table at Time Market Deli & Pizza, and the nearly full moon is just above the horizon. There is a slight autumn chill, and Anjani, 30, reaches over and pulls a knit blanket closer around Adela Jade, their 2-month-old daughter.

Both are chuckling as they recount the story of the proposal. Chadwick, 36, had a green garnet stone in his pocket and a romantic proposal planned at the summit of their day hike.

Then the flulike symptoms struck.

"He was talking to himself, laughing, moaning — I mean totally out there," Anjani says.

"It took everything I had just to get up there, but I was determined to do it," Chadwick adds.

Turns out the struggle was worth it, because Anjani immediately accepted . . . then spent the hike back down the mountain keeping an eye on her feverish fiance.

That was about a year ago. Chadwick and Anjani agree, smiling, that their relationship happened rather quickly.

When they first met four years ago at Yoga Oasis, Anjani was actually a little wary of Chadwick because she thought he was someone else — someone she wasn't very fond of. At the time, both Chadwick and Anjani were dating other people they had met at the studio.

But the sparks flew when they ended up in the same 36-hour Anusara yoga training program last year.

"It was kind of like, bam, the energy was there," says Anjani.

Anusara yoga is spiritually and emotionally intense, and the couple bonded during an activity that's described as a "celebration of the heart."

"When we were going through this process and being a team, I just felt like I had really kind of met my best friend," says Chadwick. "I felt so supported. If I was running late, she would have my mat ready for me."

Anjani and Chadwick say they've been practicing yoga recreationally for several years but didn't take actual classes until the teacher-training where they met. Now Anjani is an instructor at Yoga Oasis. Chadwick works as a scenic carpenter for the Arizona Theatre Company but still practices yoga in his free time.

"Yoga is very intimate, and you're there to connect deeper to yourself, so you end up being more attractive," explains Chadwick.

"And everyone is getting sweaty and funky," laughs Anjani.

"But everyone is so beautiful doing it," Chadwick chimes in.

The training was spread out over a few weeks, and the two got to know each other even better one-on-one because the third person in their group study sessions frequently backed out.

"It was so weird," says Chadwick. "There wasn't, like, any dating."

On the last day of their training, the two went to the All Souls Procession with Chadwick's three children. Anjani says that's when she knew he was the one for her.

"We finally caught up to the parade, and at one point he was weaving through the crowd and he reached back to grab my hand, and it was just like at that point, for me it was over," she says, glancing at Chadwick warmly.

"We moved in pretty much right after we met — after we said, 'I love you,' " says Chadwick. The couple live together with Chadwick's children and the newest addition to their family, Adela Jade.

The sky is now a dark, nighttime blue, and Anjani and Chadwick are munching on slices of pizza while taking turns rocking Adela Jade in her carrier. She hardly makes a peep despite the traffic.

The engaged couple just celebrated their one-year anniversary a few days ago but kept it pretty low-key.

"We had pie," Anjani laughs. "We went to get pie at the B Line and then ran over to a friend's birthday party. It's so hard with a baby that's newborn."

Which is one reason the couple are waiting to get married until the early summer. They plan on having the ceremony at Turkey Creek in the Chiricahua Mountains when the creek is full and running.

"It was an unconventional courting . . . and everything else," laughs Anjani.