As they walked through the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame during its grand opening in Arlington, Texas, in early 2010, Jim Goodwin, John Sommer, and a few others immediately noticed that something important was missing. It didn't take long to figure it out. There was nothing there to honor the long legacy of professional women bowlers. On June 29, 2011 as part of The Night at the Campus event during International Bowl Expo, 50 Years of Women's Pro Bowling was unveiled to the world.
It's no secret the number of league bowlers has dropped every year for more than three decades. It's also well-known the many ways the United States Bowling Congress and its predecessors have attempted to change that. Adding more awards, increasing youth scholarships, creating national promotions and asking people to join for the good of the sport have done nothing to stop the drop from nine million to two million registered league bowlers since 1980. 
President Barack Obama had another close encounter with bowling when he greeted industry leaders after a National Veterans Day breakfast Friday to honor the nation's military veterans. USBC Executive Director Stu Upson and BPAA Executive Director Steve Johnson attended a White House breakfast in Washington, D.C., as special guest of the Bowlers to Veterans Link, one of many veteran services organizations in attendance.
People like Jim Sturm admit they find it hard to sit back and watch things develop and not be able to directly help. Anyone like the South Charleston, W.Va., bowling proprietor always wants to be at the forefront of whatever they do. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the Dunbar Bowling Center owner decided to run for United States Bowling Congress president in July. What may have caught some off-guard was that he won. Sturm isn't one of them.
Bowling is the most popular participant sport in America according to research released by the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America. The survey of 24,000 American adults by Simmons Market Research showed that 22.2 percent took part in bowling in 2010. That beat out popular sports like basketball (15,.1 percent) and golf (13.7). Participation sports are defined as those that typically require more than one person to play.
Ever since bowling came to America in the 1800s, it has been synonymous with smoking. Smoking was considered an every day pastime for nearly 200 years as people partook in theaters, restaurants, airplanes and other public places. But attitudes started changing in 1964 with the famous U.S. surgeon general’s report that cigarette smoking was a health hazard.
To accommodate the new landscape, some public places, including bowling centers, began offering smoking and non-smoking accommodations.
While the Dallas-Fort Worth area hosts the world's greatest women bowlers this week (U.S. Women's Open), the business side of the sport also will converge on the Metroplex when International Bowl Expo takes place Monday through Thursday at the Gaylord Texan Hotel and Convention Center in Grapevine. About 5,000 bowling center owners and their staffs, bowling industry leaders and local bowling association officials will take part in a variety of meetings, educational sessions, networking events and the largest trade show in the industry.
Flying around the famed Milwaukee Mile with GoBowling.com branding on his vehicle, race car driver Alex Lloyd finished 22nd in the Milwaukee 225 IZOD Indy Car Series last Sunday. The partnership between the bowling industry and Lloyd's Dale Coyne Racing Racing team was announced earlier in the week by Strike Ten Entertainment. It marked a return to the bowling-Indy Car tie-in first developed in the mid-1990s between the American Bowling Congress and the late Stan Fox.
Nearly 300 of the world's best women bowlers will be seeking to compete in one of the world's largest venues when the 2011 U.S. Women's Open comes to North Texas. While the pro-am and early rounds will be held June 24-29 at AMF Euless Lanes, the televised finals will take place June 30 on specially-constructed lanes at the 50-yard line of Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. The stepladder matches will be taped for showing July 2 at 6 p.m. EDT on ESPN2. 
As part of a family that had owned Rose City Bowl in New Castle, Ind., for more than 40 years, he had seen the number of bowlers in his area and nationwide dip for a long time. After so many ideas failed to change that, he was scratching his head. "I wanted to know what I could do to reverse the trend," Rutherford said. "Turned out I was in the right place at the right time." That place was the East Coast Bowling Centers Convention last October in Atlantic City, N.J. 
Bill Supper, who has spent more than 30 years in a wide variety of bowling leadership positions, has been named Vice President of Worldwide Distribution by BowlSole Inc. Supper, a North Richland Hills, Texas, resident, adds his new consultant position to his current roles as managing director of the International Bowling Pro Shops and Instructors Association and executive director of the Bowling and Billiards Institute of America. BowlSole is the world’s first disposable pad that will directly adhere to virtually all types of street shoes. 
Alternative country music star Steve Earle does a popular tune called "I Ain't Ever Satisfied," and when you look at the career of USBC Hall of Famer Anne Marie Duggan and the things she has had to say about it over the years, you almost start to wonder if Earle had her in mind when he wrote it. Reporters who expected to find a gleeful Anne Marie after she bowled the first 300 game of her career at the 1983 LPBT Houston Classic, found instead a disgruntled bowler who could think only of the one Brooklyn strike she threw that game.
You might think the 15 weeks Diandra Asbaty had to prepare for the 2011 PBA Tournament of Champions after giving birth to her first child would be too little time. Then you look for her name in the tournament’s final standings and it hits you: This is no ordinary mother. Asbaty, a World Bowling Writers Hall of Famer and 13-time Team USA member, finished as the highest-cashing woman in the field, 16 places above defending champion Kelly Kulick and higher even than some of the top men in bowling today—Wes Malott, Patrick Allen, Rhino Page, Pete Weber.
Anyone who watched as it happened will not soon forget it. When Missy Parkin of Fullerton, Calif. took the approach in the 10th frame of her match against the sport's hottest hand in Kelly Kulick at the 2010 USBC Queens, she stood merely a mark and five pins away from moving one step closer to the women's title she has chased for years. "I don't think anybody wants it worse than she does," says her best friend and fellow pro Scott Norton. "She's been knocking on the door for years.
These are exciting times for collegiate bowling.
Nearly a decade of constant growth has increased the number of schools with bowling programs to almost 240, well above the more than 160 schools fielding teams 10 years ago. During the same period, the total number of competitors has nearly doubled to more than 3,400. There now are more than 80 annual tournaments and almost 100 schools offering some form of scholarships. Yet USBC College Bowling Manager Gary Brown isn’t satisfied. 
Casual bowlers and anyone else who will not try the game because of the thought of wearing rental shoes soon will be able bowl in their own shoes thanks to the world's first disposable bowling shoe pad. Invented by entrepreneur Thomas Marandos of Selden, N.Y., and called BowlSole, the pads will directly adhere to most types of street shoes and slide the same as regular bowling shoes. They will be available only at bowling centers for about the same price as rental shoes.
How often have you heard bowlers, professionals and amateurs alike, refer to their equipment as "plastic" or "resin"? In point of fact, these are misrepresented and distorted words used to describe bowling balls. Manufacturers classify bowling balls as polyester or urethane. Somewhere, somehow, outside the manufacturing industry, "resin" and "plastic" surfaced as the proper lingo. Interestingly, the usage of "plastic" is not only misused by bowlers, but is never corrected by those who should know better, including me.
Soon after their teams qualified for Super Bowl XLV, some fans of the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers quickly began booking packages to attend Sunday's game in Arlington, Texas.
They also wanted to take in some other events. With many festivities costing in the thousands of dollars, the $300 per person and $500 per couple cost of the sixth annual NFL Charities Super Bowl Celebrity Bowling Classic was a relative bargain and went to a good cause.