BATON ROUGE - For me, the new bowling season starts Thursday night at All Star Lanes and I’m really very excited.

My Thursday night league has eight more teams this year, 24 total, and frankly, pretty much the cream of the crop in Baton Rouge bowling will be in action. Then there’s me.

But I’m ready. I’m set. I can’t wait to see my teammates and all my friends on the lanes this Thursday.

And so what could go wrong? I kept thinking that Saturday morning. I was at All Star to do something I don’t do enough, practice. So there I was out to check out that the ball would still go forward.

The ball did go forward just a lot of times not where I wanted it. So after three games with four strikes 10 splits and nine missed single pins, it was definitely time to rethink this whole thing.

But for some reason I am excited to get things going again. I don’t know why, but I am.

Maybe I’m “excited” because I’m lucky that bowling is a lifetime sport that I’ve been fortunate to participate in league-type bowling since I was a 10-year-old kid in 1968 in Shreveport. My form isn’t much better these days and I certainly can’t average in the high 180s like I did at my peak, but I can still make the ball go forward (well, it sort of goes sideways and then forward heading back the other way).

I make a lot of jokes about my bowling (any those who’ve watched and bowl with me have made several over the years), but it is still my passion and hopefully I remember the Toby Keith line from one of his hits: “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.”

Also at All Star while I was there Saturday, they were setting up for their Back-to-School bowling event for kids. Some 300 had signed up to take part and hopefully some of those will join leagues in the future.

PWBA ENDS IN STYLE

We talked last week in this spot of the lack of advancement for the PWBA Tour as far as television exposure compared to the growing exposure for other women’s sports these days and we cited some of the many reasons.

Shortly after that a good move was made to simulcast the par BowlTV stream on the free BowlingTV app which has shown a couple of live events but primarily shows some of the classic PWBA and PBA events from the last 15-20 years.

I thought BowlTV, the PWBA and all involved put on a really good television show last week for the Tour Championship. What made it seem more special was there was CBS’ Dave Ryan in for the call with Syd Brummett, who is rapidly becoming a very good analyst for the Tour. Emile Williams Jr., who handles a lot of the regular season streaming shows, handled the sideline reports.

It was a well-done show that really tried to make the point that this was a big-time event, which it was. And in the end, 22-year-old Jillian Marin won her fifth title and third major with the win was a great storyline.

She became the first bowler since the relaunched PWBA (2015) to win the Triple Crown – Queens, U.S. Women’s Open and Tour Championship. She is the youngest ever Triple Crown winner and makes her eligible for the PWBA Hall of Fame when she turns 40. Two of the majors came this season. 

That should be enough to make her the choice as PWBA Player of the Year.

Speaking of Dave Ryan, it’s great that he steps into the booth for some of these streaming shows (both Ryan and Kelly Kulick did the streamed Junior Gold finals earlier in the summer) and I know he is compensated for these appearances, but it is part of a nice trend that is seeing some of bowling’s top announcers make their way to the streaming platform for BowlTV.

Dave Lamont has been in the booth a lot the last couple of years, primarily on PBA50 shows, especially some of their majors and Randy Pedersen showed up for a couple of PBA preliminary rounds before TV on the stream.

There are lots of good announcers who regularly handle those streams but I think it just adds a lot of familiarity to viewers when one of the announcers they’ve watched for a long time, who has that knowledge, steps back in the booth.

Back with you next Monday.

Until then, good luck and good bowling,

                                                      Kent Lowe