I can't believe this was ever possible, but what we encountered this past Wednesday evening was nothing short of ridiculous.  We had the unfortunate chance happening to be assigned lanes next to two teams from Wautoma, Wisconsin, who decided to travel hundreds of miles to bowl league.  At least half of the participants appeared to be intoxicated prior to taking the lanes, and continued to drink heavily during the tournament.  Several of the participants fouled, fell, or crossed the foul line during their competition.  One of the competitors split his pants and continued to bowl with parts of his anatomy visible every time he bowled.  As bad as that appeared to be, their significant others in the stands made ridiculous howls everytime one of their team members did something significant on the lanes, like the ball not going in the gutter.  At least 5 other teams in our area, and our 2 teams complained to the USBC tournament supervisor on hand, who did nothing to correct the situation.  If this is how the USBC is going to allow conduct on the lanes than they have a bigger issue on their hands than they think.  Selling beer to competitors during the tournament is not a good idea, and why have tournament officials on site if they're going to allow this behavior to happen.  If this were to happen at a NEBA, State, PBA, TNBA or nay other sanctioned tournament, the competitors and their significant others would have been removed from the tournament, after being warned.  When the official on site was questioned after the squad, she saw nothing wrong with their actions. 

I understand our participation in this tournament is not going to threaten anyone's day job, but in the past we've finished top 15 in the tournament and have three former touring pro's out of our 10.  So we're not at our first rodeo.  This is my tenth tournament, and our companion team has over 80 years combined and none of us had seen these actions before.  And yet, the USBC doesn't want to hear about it?   Everyone on site questioned didn't want to accept a complaint. 

What are my options?  I'm not looking for refunds or anything like that, just want to stop what happened to us from happening to anyone else...

Thanks for the rant,

Bill Daley
Better Bowling Concepts
Turbo Grips Regional Staff

Just got back.  The day before we bowled, there was a "fight" of sorts.  Sounded like a lot of huffing and puffing, but most of the officials seemed like they were almost expecting something like this to happen eventually.  Get enough people together and you're going to have personalities that won't get along.  Officials are still so worried about losing a few people that they're scared to upset anyone.

I talked with a couple workers that devote their time to the tournament every year.  From their perspective, they'd really like to make this tournament much bigger so they don't have to scramble to find multiple jobs throughout the year.  Many positions require this to be their full-time occupation for 4-6 months of the year.  Growing the tournament also gives more power to add outside sponsors and get multiple cities offering incentives.

Sounds like there are many ideas of how to make this tournament bigger, but there will be problems that come out of this.  Talks of another division around 181-210 or so.  Talks of making it handicap and using tournament average.  Talks of having side events at same site as main tournament (very possible at Reno).  Anything reasonable that will make this tournament bigger is under consideration from what I heard.  Most ideas seem to carry baggage with them. 

I really like the changes for next year in having fresh oil for all squads, 6 on a pair for minors and not moving.  However, I don't see any of those ideas adding thousands of new bowlers.

I'd love to see 15-20,000 teams, but I don't see how to get there.  Adding women and the classified division has made the biggest impact on adding teams, IMO, in recent years.  I'm not sure what other major impact will add another 5,000+ teams over the next 5 years.