There was only one rule, and both bowling teams broke it over and over.

"No hugging the competition," Lisa Claytor hollered as Torina Walls wrapped both arms around a beefy guy named Logan.

Fraternization? There was nothing fraternal about it. What happened that afternoon was 100 percent maternal. Two weeks before Mother's Day, Georgia Tech football freshmen joined their mothers for lunch, bowling and, inevitably, hugs.

A year ago, the players made headlines as not only an outstanding recruiting class but an outstandingly close one. They seemed to recruit each other almost as much as they got recruited by Tech. The rest of the story, it turns out, is their moms grew close, too.

The moms met on their sons' recruiting visits, exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, then used them to keep in touch as their sons studied, played and practiced their way through freshman year. This mother-son day was the logical extension of that; when nine sons said they were interested their moms made it happen.

So there they were April 26, swapping tales over the final bites of lunch in a private room at Fox Sports Grill.

Lisa shared how she made a football player out of Nick, who hasn't always been a 6-foot-6, 304-pound terror. The day mom first put a helmet on her preschooler, he threw a fit. But Lisa had no intention of taking that helmet off his head. She got him something to eat, instead.

"I said, 'Nicholas, watch your cartoon, eat some snacks,'" she recalled. "Eventually, he forgot he had the helmet on. An offensive lineman was born."

Little Morgan Burnett, now a starting safety, didn't want anything on his head, either.

"He said, 'Daddy, I don't want this helmet on. I can hit real hard without the helmet,'" Ellary Burnett said.

And maybe Kyle Jackson should have been wearing a helmet the day the future linebacker went headlong after a pass. He hit a pole and knocked out a tooth.

"But Mama, I caught the football," Kyle told Beverly Jackson, who had started her son in youth soccer to try to protect him from incidents like that.

Keely Dwyer wasn't so sure she wanted her 4-year-old playing football, either. Her husband, Tony, sneaked Jonathan out the door on some pretext and brought him home in uniform. The extra small football pants were still so big the legs had to be taped or the future Parade All-America running back would have tripped over himself.

Offensive lineman Joseph Gilbert didn't have that problem. Now 6-4, 288 pounds, he has always been as enthusiastic as he is big. Jerri Gilbert said Joseph would walk up to kids half his size and ask, "Don't you want to play?"

As each mother told her story, the sons laughed at their friends and hoped their own moms wouldn't remember anything too embarrassing about them. Receiver Tyler Melton's mother joined the lunch conversation by phone from Houston.

The NFL draft's opening round unfolded on a muted flat screen mounted on the wall, and outside in the main room Troy University's Leodis McKelvin of Waycross awaited the news of where he would begin his pro career. For the Tech freshmen and their mothers, though, football was clearly still about family and friends, not business.

At Funtime Bowl, sons formed one team and mothers another.

"This is a lot of fun," Torina Walls confided. "I just hope we beat 'em."

Mothers, it turned out, play dirty.

As Keely Dwyer's son attempted to convert a spare, she tried to distract him. "Jonathan, I love you, Jon," she said as he bowled. The pins fell, anyway, and he blew his mother a kiss.

When Nick Claytor's back was turned, his mom bowled the second ball of his eighth frame and knocked down only two pins. He tried for revenge by bowling in place of Keely Dwyer. Claytor placed the ball on the floor, rolled it as slowly as he could down the lane ... and accidentally bowled a strike.

The guys won, anyway, with A-back Roddy Jones on top with a 163. Only two mothers outscored their sons — former league bowler Torina Walls over defensive lineman Logan 140-107, and Marlene Peterson over defensive back Michael 87-83.

"It's only the second thing I've beaten him at," Marlene Peterson said. "I beat him in a 5K race, him and his friends. Oh, yeah, I did [rub it in], and he said the same thing he did this time, 'I let you win.'"

The mother-son day idea started with the Dwyers. Twice a month, they go to lunch, or watch a movie, or get an ice cream cone, or walk through the mall. The activity isn't the focus. Spending time together is. They talk about everything; nothing is off limits.

"From girls to school to anything that comes to mind," Jonathan said.

What started as a mom-initiated activity when Jonathan was 5 changed as he grew older. He started taking charge during his years at Kell High School. Sometimes, he even pays.

One recent mother-son day, Roddy Jones joined them to watch a Tech tennis match. That's when Keely got the idea for the group mother-son day. Jonathan asked his friends if they'd be interested, and they said yes, and Keely organized it.

Jonathan is likely to lead the Yellow Jackets in rushing this fall, but the first-string B-back clearly wants to be a first-string son, too. Asked to name his most memorable mother-son day, he broke into an All-America smile.

"Every time I spend time with her is memorable," he said.