Jeff Richgels to Join USBC Hall of Fame

When Jeff Richgels was a boy, a bruising tackle in a pickup football game sent him crashing to the ground and bent his right wrist under him and broke it. He then proceeded to play more football and didn't see a doctor about it until days later when it was too late to fix it without re-breaking it and setting it properly. Richgels refused, and his wrist never healed properly. If not for that, who knows what he might have accomplished on the bowling lanes?

As it is, he's won four eagles in the USBC Championships over the years and is in contention this year to win another, been a Gold medalist for Team USA, won 29 PBA regional titles, is one of only three people known to have bowled all events at the USBC Championships without a single open frame, and will soon be inducted into the USBC Hall of Fame via a new Performance category. Not only that, but he will soon turn 50 and be joining the senior tour.

You can read the whole story here, follow his outstanding bowling blog, The 11th Frame, here, and below is an excellent video profile of this outstanding bowler.

Ohio Man Bowls 300 After Almost Dying in Freak Accident

"I want to be an inspiration to people who have strokes or whatever...Work with it and things will work out."

--Don Maloney

Don Maloney is a pretty good bowler. This comes as no surprise given the fact that he owns a bowling center in Ohio. But what is surprising is that he was able to quickly rebound from a terrible, freak accident that almost cost him his ability to move and even his life "and [he] just about had to learn to walk again" to bowl 300 on the challenging lane conditions of none other than the USBC Open Championships in Reno recently. You can read more about this inspiring story and see a short news channel video about it here.

How to Get Your Bowling Fix

Do you miss the PBA telecasts on ESPN? Are you going through televised bowling withdrawal? Well, you can always go back and watch YouTube's archives of bowling telecasts, many of which you can view in embedded videos on this blog if they're from the past couple of years. Or you can subscribe to PBA Xtra Frame and watch live match play of senior and some regional Tour events over the spring and summer, as well as access the archives that go back ten or so years.

However, if you don't want to pay for any subscriptions and you'd like to watch bowlers at the USBC Open in Reno and other upcoming events this spring and summer, you can always check out Bowl.com for their live streaming of numerous bowling competitions, and you can also access their growing archives of past events including the recently concluded Queens match play and Senior Queens finals, Men's Team USA competition, and so forth.

Bowl.com has posted a schedule of upcoming events they'll be covering live over the next few months including tonight's live coverage of Carolyn Dorin-Ballard's team competing in the USBC Open at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno. So whether you're willing to pay for it or you want it for free, your bowling fix is literally just a mouse click or two away.

Why I'm not Bowling the USBC Open Championships

I've lived in Sacramento since late 2004. Reno's National Bowling Stadium has hosted the USBC Open Championships three times since I've lived here. The National Bowling Stadium is only 131 miles away from my driveway, according to Google Maps. Yet, despite the fact that some travel thousands of miles to bowl the Open, I've never bowled "nationals," and I won't be bowling this year either. Why is that?

Well, for one thing, I'm too darn lousy a bowler to waste that much money on a tournament. If there's one thing I've learned from doing this blog, watching Xtra Frame, and from my humiliating experience this interminable season in a travel scratch league, it's that even though I never thought I was very good, I'm a lot, lot worse than I thought. The fact that I didn't bowl well in the two tournaments I've bowled at the National Stadium also doesn't light my fire to bowl the Open there this year.

And if that's not enough to keep me away, I see guys like Matt McNiel bowling monster scores there. And lest you say, "Well, he's a lefty. Maybe you can't beat the lefties at the Stadium, but you can hang with your fellow righties," I counter with, "Well what about Matt Weggen?"

Matt Weggen (see photo above) is a 31-year-old right-hander who took the singles and all-events lead at the Open this year by shooting 806 in doubles and 826 in singles yesterday, April 19. Now, how the hell can mere mortals like me compete with that and all the other 800 series, 300 games, and 2100+ all-events totals that have already been shot?

And what's with with all these astronomical scores? I don't expect the USBC Open to put out a U.S. Open oil pattern, but it's still supposed to be a "sport" condition, and people tell me it's tough. So why are all these guys I've never heard of before shooting these monstrous scores? And if they can do it, why can't I? Well, because if I can't even average 200 in a travel league on house conditions, how am I going to average 230+ on a "sport" pattern in the biggest bowling tournament on earth, no matter how loosely the term "sport" may apply to the lane conditions in Reno right now?

How about you? Are you bowling nationals this year, even if your name isn't Matt? If so, how do you feel about going up against these incredible scores?

Matt McNiel's Lightning Almost Strikes Twice At USBC Open Championships

Matt McNiel made bowling history last year at the Reno National Bowling Stadium when he rolled 740 in the team event, 780 in doubles, and 806 in singles to win the all-events title at the USBC Open Championships with an astounding nine-game total of 2,326.

Not only did McNiel win the coveted all-events "eagle," but he also broke the "unbreakable" all-events record of 2,321 that Ron Vokes set at the Open in Las Vegas just a year before. It was an amazing performance.

So, when the 25-year-old left-hander returned to Reno last weekend to compete in this year's Open, all eyes were upon the defending champion to see how he would do this time around. And McNiel didn't disappoint. In the team event Sunday evening, he began with a 258, followed it with a 263, and finished with a 224 to shoot 745 and lead his team to eighth place in the team standings.

After reading about this in Jeff Richgels' column yesterday, I decided to tune in Monday evening to watch Bowl.com's live streaming of McNiel's doubles and singles outings. And, again, disappointment was in short supply. McNiel led off his doubles effort with a 245, then blasted a 300, and began with a five-bagger before going a little high in the sixth frame to leave an 8 pin and finish out with a 277 for an awesome 822 series. That 822 made McNiel only the second person in history to shoot two 800 series in the USBC Open Championships.

At this point, with a 6-game total of 1567, McNiel needed to shoot 760 in singles to break his all-events record, and he needed a 691 to take the lead in all-events this year. And if he'd been able to stay on the pair on which he began the evening, he might well have been able to do the latter or even the former. But having to move to a different pair presented problems with carry that McNiel was unable to fully solve, as he shot games of 236-215-223 for a 674 series and all-events total of 2241.

By normal standards, this was still an outstanding effort. Yet, "normal" is hardly a word one would use to describe the extraordinary accomplishments of Matt McNiel over his previous fifteen games at the Open.

Matt McNiel is an outstanding amateur bowler with a smooth yet hard throwing lefty style somewhat reminiscent to my eye of Ryan Ciminelli's. But you can judge for yourself by checking out his performance last night in the embedded videos below. The first video is of his entire performance, and the second video is of the tenth frame of his second game of doubles where he shot 300.

As a side note, McNiel shot 299 and 800 last year at the Open but didn't receive USBC sport condition honor awards for them because he didn't have a USBC sport league membership at the time. And he still hadn't upgraded his membership when he shot his first 300 on a sport condition last Thursday night. So when he got to Reno this year, he asked one of the USBC folks if he could upgrade his membership there, they let him do it, and it's a good thing he did.

You can read Jeff Richgel's excellent profiles of McNiel last year here, and this year here, and Bowl.com's recap of McNiel's entire outing this year here.

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Matt McNeil Looks for Historic Repeat in USBC Open

Nobody has ever won the all-events title at the USBC Open Championships two years in a row, but Matt McNiel could become the first. The 25-year-old Minnesota left-hander bowled an incredible 2,326 last year to break the all-events record, shooting 780 (team), 740 (doubles), and 806 (singles). This year, he started out with a 745 in the team event last night and will bowl doubles and singles tonight.

You can watch him bowl live tonight on Bowl.com starting at 5:30 PM Pacific time, and you can read more about him here.