I am concerned. Flame if you will, but at least hear me out.
While I was at the WIBC tournament and convention in Tulsa, along with most of the other members of our local association board, a local meeting was held in Albuquerque where the new USBC local association plan was introduced. With our local WIBC president, vice presidents, secretary, treasurer and numerous directors in Tulsa for the convention, who attended this meeting? I don't have attendance records, but I'd hazard a guess that it was mostly local ABC reps.
During the meeting, sanctioning fees were discussed. The sanction fee will remain $16 for the 2005-2006 season. BUT, and this is my concern, if a woman wants to bowl in a women's-only league or a women's tournament anywhere in the state, she will be assessed an additional $2.50 sanction fee. This doesn't mean much to me, personally, since I've dual-sanctioned since I first started bowling, but how many women actually do that? Just from my own multi-league experience, I'd estimate that fewer than 25 percent of the women in our state are dual-sanctioned. In the mixed league for which I serve as secretary, two out of 45 women are dual-sanctioned.
How can this be allowed to happen? How can a person be penalized for merely wanting to continue bowling the same leagues and tournaments in which they've participated for years?
If this is a trend across the country, it would seem a new, albeit small, cash-cow has been discovered. In 2003-2004, 1,157,308 women sanctioned through the WIBC. If 1/4 of those women dual-sanctioned (a personal choice), that leaves 867,981 who sanctioned only through WIBC organizations. If each of those women is assessed $2.50 more to be able to bowl in women's leagues and tournaments, that will be an additional $2,169,952.50 in sanction fees paid by women who in the past chose to only sanction through one organization.
Now don't shoot me here, but I could see a small premium applied to those women, myself included, who choose to bowl all available tournaments, but what is the logic behind the additional fee for women who want fewer competition options?
Add to that the almost 25 percent increase in the entry fee for next year's national women's tournament, and I can envision a much smaller base of women bowlers in the not-too-distant future. Surely that can't be good for our sport on any level.
Deb
