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Author Topic: Another one bites the dust  (Read 2264 times)

Pinbuster

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Another one bites the dust
« on: January 09, 2015, 08:03:34 AM »
Thunderbird bowl in Wichita Ks has announced it will close at the end of April this year.

Thunderbird is an independently owned 40 lane house with AMF pinsetters.

It was suppose to host the USBC women's championship team competition in 2019, I believe. I'm guessing that will be moved to another center in town now.

It also hosted a Southwest Regional each year.

This represents about 20% of the lane beds in the city.

The lease on the building was up and the owners could not agree on a lease or selling price for the building.
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spencerwatts

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2015, 08:13:22 AM »
Just the thought of Wichita. I haven't been through there in nearly 20 years. I didn't realize at the time that Wichita State had an established bowling program, and Wichita was a cool bowling town. I used to travel to Hutchinson back in that day.
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ITZPS

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2015, 08:25:32 AM »
Northrock is capable of hosting the women's USBC in 2019, probably the better venue anyway, but Thunderbird has a lot of history there . .
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Pinbuster

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2015, 08:47:17 AM »
Northrock has the Doubles and Singles for the women's open and had partnered with Thunderbird to host the team competition.

There are a couple of other centers with 32 to 36 lanes that they could use for the team event.
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t1buck

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2015, 10:23:35 AM »
wow that sucks I like the center. We get to bowl there when the KS state tournament is there.  Did have a problem last years tournament a machine was having electrical problems kept sounding like a foul light was going off all day. It was happening the weekend before also. But like to bowl there. Sad to see it go.
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ksucat

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2015, 12:33:40 PM »
Sad to see that as everybody seemed to respect Nadine Opplinger.  She was owner/operator until her passing a few years ago. 

We're getting started with high school bowling here and I wonder how that will affect teams next year.  I live on West side of town and there are too many teams for that center already.  T-Bird was more South-central.  City doesn't have very good geographic spread of it's bowling centers for where the rooftops are.
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