Striving and training for Team USA was always a career goal of mine, until the recent changes in the past 4 years or so. While the talent that is competing out there is a representation of the best amatuer talent in the country, the whole system is messed up from the top to the bottom. With the addition of 5 professionals being selected from the start, Team USA Trials (No longer the National Amateur Championships) has become nothing more than a glorified week of a practice session among good bowlers where you can train all your life, bowl your heart out for the entire week, just to see the same faces (David Haynes, Bill Hoffman, Derek Eoff, Diandra Asbaty, Shannon Pluhowsky, Shannon O'Keefe) and maybe 1 or 2 others both male and female get picked regardless of their performance for the week.
Yes, we all know Team USA is one of the greatest programs there is. Representing your country is an honor that our USA Team does with excellence year in and year out, but I can't for the life of me understand how they can even draw the smallest entries year after year much longer with the politicking and automatic berths of the members of "The USBC Clique". Yes that clique may be the best bowlers in our country but unless you put on a stellar performance and win the thing or finished runner up, there's practically no shot whatsoever for you to make the team. Then even if you are one of the lucky ones to have a great week and have all of your hard work pay off, chances are (and when I say chances, I mean 100% chances) you won't even get that chance to shoe up on the big stage of international competition.
You see it time in and time out both on adult and junior team USA, great bowlers who may be "unknowns" that go on a tear good enough to make the team without the selection process, but don't get invited to certain camps or any type of competition. In all fairness to the coaches and selection committee, the people that do repeatedly make the team year after year on a performance merit and do well in international competition definately earn their keep. The coaches do have a vested interest in these players and have been working with their games for a long long time. That is why I can see and understand them picking the same choices over and over, simply to develop their games even more. Going into a competition like this, it's just so hard to see how you can go into something like this at your peak of training and as good as you may be that week, you still have no chance.
My hat goes off to those who those who year in and year out shoe up and strive for that goal of theirs. It really shows their dedication to the sport and how much of an honor Team USA is to them. They are the true future of where our sport is going. Their talent, determination, and dedication to bowling, their country, and the true essence of Team Bowling is something that should be stood up and cheered for. It's just sad that not everyone can get the same chances as someone else based merely on name sake and not talent at the actual "Team USA Trials."
I wonder how long it may be before these things are done with and there is just an annual conference to pick the team based on national level merit achievement wise? I know it would save some dreams from getting crushed and bowling your heart out to finish 4th, just one spot off of the top 3 picks, just to have someone that week who finished in 27th or 33rd to get selected because they are who they are.
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-DJ Marshall
...The Twelve In a Row Pro Shop. AMF Bowie Lanes -- Bowie, MD
