It's been a couple weeks since the women stopped here, and I thought I'd offer some comments, perspective, and some info. I got to be involved in a lot of the behind the scenes stuff and prep work, and also got the spectator experience. First of all, the PBA drill truck was here, so I did a lot of watching. However, I did do a lot of little stuff, fixes, adjustments, and I did drill a few balls, will talk about that later. I got a little tour of the drill truck, but it's not too spectacular. It's a press, some tools, little work bench, and just rack after rack of balls. Several hundred balls in the truck.
It's a long couple days for the bowlers, especially the ones that make it to the end. My wife is a part time manager at the center and took time off from her day job to be there for the whole event, and I recently quit my day job and went full time in the shop, so our days started at 5:30 am and ended at about 1am. I can't say enough about the professionalism of the bowlers, all of them. They were all super polite, talkative, and accommodating of fans who wanted to talk or wanted an autograph. Kelly Kulick especially stood out, she knows she's the one of the big faces of the tour, and instead of being cocky or standoffish, she takes it the complete other direction. She really acts as an ambassador for the women, very outgoing, friendly, etc.
One of the center owners (also the owner of our shop group) took it upon himself to provide the women a full spread of meals every day also so they didn't have to leave the center or wait on snack bar food. Great meals, good stuff, healthy, plenty of options, the women all REALLY appreciated that. Several of them also hung out for a while after qualifying the first day, they grazed on the buffet, had some drinks, and while some bowled the pro ams, most of the others stuck around to watch and chat up the crowd.
SEVERAL of the ones that didn't qualify also returned to watch match play the second day, Tish Johnson even took it upon herself to do score collection and verification for match play all day. There were a few highlights, Liz Kuhlkin shooting 300, had the front 9 from a couple others, but it was a tough shot, a modified version of Beijing. Going back to professionalism, we have a tough pair here, and there were a lot of low scores, the scoring pace overall was rough, but I barely saw frowns out of all the women when it wasn't going well, or even when it was embarrassing. There was no (audible) cussing, no punching, hitting, kicking, throwing, or even lightly tossing anything. I didn't really expect there to be, but the overwhelming absence of any negative reaction was impressive.
From my end, it was a very awesome few days. I've always been the part time and emergency fill in guy, and always just been here in town. I've been the one working the shop or elsewhere when the opportunities to see stuff like this or be involved with came around. Always get to hear a lot of stories from others about things, but this stuff has only ever existed for me on a screen. I got to be right in the middle of everything, and I'm still buzzing about it. I got to fix a few things for Lindsay Boomershine and Marcia Kloempken, nice to help out some of the "big wigs" for the company I'm on staff with, learned a few things, did a few interesting fixes, etc. A couple weeks before the tournament I also got to plug/reslug and redrill several balls for Shannon Pluhowsky's wife, Megan Kelly, who is a very sweet person.
The coolest thing by a long shot is that due to a few circumstances I won't discuss, I ended up drilling a few balls for Carolyn Dorin-Ballard. Wow. I'm sure you can gather she's very perfectionistic, but I nailed the few balls I drilled, and she was very complimentary and thankful. I got to talk up Del a bit while he was laying the balls out, and it was all completely surreal. Also have gotten to talk to Carolyn several times over the last couple weeks, she's a regional rep for Turbo, and got me all signed up and squared away with them so I'm pretty excited about that too. I was already a huge fan before and am an even bigger one now, she's absolutely great.
Setting up was insane. All the tables and chairs at the back of the bowlers area had to be unbolted and removed. We have a newish center built with Brunswick stuff, so we have the tables at the back of the bowlers area that have the racks for the house balls underneath them and the tall round tables in the back. All had to come up and out, and we got bleachers. Transitioning to the finals set was even more insane. We had 45 minutes to clear the area, reposition all the bleachers, get chairs out, they had to get a couple lanes stripped to get banners out on them and the video camera on the lane all set up, and then get everyone seated and arranged and it was complete chaos. They had two Flex machines out there, one stripping and one oiling, those were very cool.
There's TONS more to tell, but I could ramble for several more paragraphs, probably just be easier to answer questions. It was all too cool for words, just way too cool. I thought I would be disappointed after they left, but the memories are good enough. I'm really hoping this happens again next year and indefinitely. I'm sure you got questions, fire away!
