I worked on getting a friend of mine to bowl at Northside on Sunday. He said it was too far (about 40 minutes farther) to go so he ended up bowling three squads at the Freestate tournament in Frederick instead. He ended up bowling well shooting like 740 760 780 for the three squads, cashing once and basically broke even for the day. I thought that was pretty funny but typical to at the same time. Maybe it felt better to average 250 and lose money, I don't know but it's a common theme with bowlers on THS tournaments. But I've been working on him to come out and start supporting more local tournaments and I think he will start coming out which brings me to something that I think we can do as the core supporters of local scratch tournaments.
I'm thinking maybe we need to try and start more of a grass roots effort in recruiting tournament bowlers. That means really start talking to the bowlers -individually- about trying some of the great scratch tournaments we have in our area. I probably have 7 or 8 guys just in my Tuesday night league alone that I could talk to about coming out and bowling some scratch tournaments over the next couple of months. Honestly a lot of times the guys just don't know about what's going on locally, and if you're not a tournament regular you do tend to miss out on what's going on. I say let's make a real effort in league to talk individually to everybody that might be the type to bowl a scratch tournament. Let them know what's going on that weekend, which tournaments they might bowl in, what the conditions might be like, what the scoring pace might be. You would be surprised how many guys have no clue what there is to bowl in.
If each one of us (meaning the 15 or 20 or so regulars) could find a couple bowlers to 'mentor' we can start building the entries. Maybe you have a friend that's on the edge about bowling scratch tournaments. Try offering to carpool with them to the tournament site so they will have to commit to the tournament and not flake out. Carpooling might work especially if one of the tournaments venues that are some distance away like York, Elkton, Blue Hen, and Winchester where it's longer drive.
Here's a novel idea. Really try mentoring some of these new recruits and give some of these newer players advice if you have something that you think might help them and it's constructive. If they don't bowl well for whatever reason, talk to them about what happened. Instead of telling them they have no chance, tell them they were just in the wrong zone, they need to work on their spares more in practice, get better at playing out, playing in, give them a pep talk, whatever. Every time you bowl you want to learn something, usually bowling poorly are the times where you tend to learn the most. Give them something that they can build on so they will keep on coming out. Try and make each tournament outing a positive experience for them even when they didn't score well. That's what I mean by being a mentor. Demoralizing them, telling them how bad they are isn't a good formula for getting them to return and try to improve. As far as cost goes, let them know that if you're just paying the entry fee (no brackets etc.) getting tournament experience isn't that expensive and let them know that as well.
The more tournaments they bowl in it will become a habit and that's what you need. When these guys start becoming regulars then they can start recruiting more bowlers.
In closing I think we can build the fields from a grass roots level but we have to work at it as individuals. If the regulars could just get one more guy we would almost immediately have 45 to 50 guys very quickly. As somebody mentioned earlier the more guys the lower the cuts are going to be and the cash spots aren't going to be 'unreachable'.
Edited on 3/19/2009 12:50 PM
