BPAA Director Steve Johnson and Stefanie Nation Defend 2012 U.S. Women's Open Finals Venue

Many people besides me have been talking in public forums about the U.S. Women's Open, including BPAA Executive Director Steve Johnson who unabashedly says that he's the one who takes sole responsibility for greenlighting the venue, and I'd like to direct your attention to some of these discussions.

A great discussion can be found here at mrbowling300.net. Here is one of several comments by the BPAA executive director:

The 5 ladies that made the show did not withdraw because they are elite athletes that have a competitive side that drives them to persevere and tackle any challenge that confronts them.
They are very classy and great ambassadors for our industry and I am proud of all of them. As I told them they are all champions in my eyes.


Having this event in Reno and on the streets was 100% my call. Don't blame the BPAA blame me.
How many people are talking about the Queens event a few weeks ago? How many people are talking about the 2010 Womens US Open and the pattern they bowled on? The answer is simple, no one.


This industry has to wake up and do some things differently. Did we purposely put dust on the lanes and turn a wind machine on? Not a chance. We staged a major event under one of the greatest icons that shouts Americana in a city that has invested millions into our sport.


Your classifying this as a disaster is your opinion but as you stated unlike our great athletes you would have refused to bowl. If they would have followed your lead and quit, we would have had a disaster but fortunately their professionalism and willingness to do what is best for our sport kept them focused on capturing the championship.  


It has been 1 week since the event and people are talking about it which is about 6 days longer than most events get discussed For those that are talking good or bad about the event, thank you for doing so.


Steve johnson
Executive director of the bpaa


And here is an eloquent critique of the finals from a forum member:


What bowler -- professional or amateur -- in the entire world, in the entire history of bowling, have you ever known or heard of who practices or has ever trained for bowling on a mountain of dust and debris on the bowling lanes?

No one does this.  No one ever has done this.  And no one ever will do this.

What the BPAA brought was a complete disaster.  It was not bowling.

To say that it was "fair" because all contestants faced the same conditions is disingenuous.  You could have removed the lanes and set the pins on the pavement on 3rd Street.  It would have been "fair" because all the bowlers would have faced the same conditions.  But at what point does it cross the line and no longer be a test of BOWLING?

The wind alone was enough of a distraction.  The women's hair was blowing in their faces.  In what bowling center anywhere in the world has that ever been an issue even once?

How does a player train for or prepare for what they faced on the telecast last night?

I know you worked for the BPAA during the tournament, so I recognize that you have a stake in the public's perception of this event.  But I'm telling you as someone who has been bowling since 1957, THIS WAS NOT BOWLING, and it most certainly was NOT FAIR TO THE CONTESTANTS.

It was a gimmick, and it cheapened the event.

Oh, it made it a spectacle, alright.  I know that's what the BPAA was going for.  But at what cost?  How did it promote bowling?  How did it promote women's bowling?

Let me tell what I would do if I was in a tournament and made the TV show, only to find that the lanes were covered in a mountain of dust.  I would have withdrawn.  I would have withdrawn right there on national television and let the whole world know that I was not about to stand for this, the money be damned.

The BPAA is a laughingstock as it is already.  They have had their way with bowling for the past thirty years, and look where it's gotten the sport.  What was once easily the most popular recreational sport in the nation is now an afterthought.  And it's largely because the BPAA has dictated the terms on which bowling's rules are formed.  While the old ABC used to govern the sport with an iron fist (and the game flourished), the minute the BPAA got the power to force the USBC to back down and let the proprietors decide what's best for the sport, it's no longer a top tier sport in America.

That's no coincidence.

I am not a fan of the BPAA, as you can clearly see.  They have done more damage to the sport of bowling than any other agency in the industry.  And this latest event is just another example of a governing body run amok.

I feel sorry for the women that they had to put up with it.  If I'd been in their shoes, I'd have walked off the telecast in protest without a second of hesitation.

It was simply not a test of any skill for which any professional bowler has ever in their life trained.

How can you possibly call that bowling?


And below is an interview that Kegel's Gus Falgien conducted with Stefanie Nation and BPAA Executive Director Steve Johnson.

Final Thoughts on 2012 U.S. Women's Open Fiasco, With Complete Video

                                                 (Photo from examiner.com)


Well, the telecast has aired, and now I can openly congratulate Kelly Kulick for winning her third U.S. Women's Open without spoiling the suspense for any of my readers. I can also offer some concluding comments about the whole messy business after having seen it, or at least most of it, with my own eyes.

I say "at least most of it," because one of my gripes, shared by many, is that ESPN2 cut out several frames of the competition in order to squeeze two hours worth of bowling action into 90 minutes. I seem to recall that last year's telecast was two hours and didn't edit out any frames, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

However, now that I've watched the telecast (and you can too below if you haven't seen it already or you want to see it again), what more is there to say that I haven't said already? Quite a lot, actually, but I'll try to keep it relatively brief.

First of all, I confess to being pleasantly surprised that things didn't turn out worse than they appeared to. I half expected to see a swirling dust storm all but blocking out our view of the action at times and sending papers and other debris flying past the bowlers and landing on the lanes and having to be removed between shots. And I more than half expected to see the ladies throwing balls that hooked off the lanes even though they were plastic, losing their footing on the dusty approaches, and looking really flustered at times. Instead, I saw consummate poise and professionalism from all the competitors as they as gracefully as humanly possible posted hapless shot after shot and made the best of a terrible situation and scored amazingly well under the circumstances. I have nothing but unbounded respect and admiration for how well Lynda, Shannon, Stefanie, Missy, and Kelly handled it all and how gracious the runners-up were afterward.

Second, I want to repeat what I've said before. I think Dave LaMont and Chris Barnes are the best announcing team in bowling today, and I'd love to see them doing ESPN's PBA telecasts together (Randy Pedersen could be there too) when Chris doesn't make the finals. They too made the best of a bad situation with that telecast.

Now, with due praise delivered, it's time to get to the criticism. I begin by asking, What were they thinking when they decided to hold the finals in a dusty wind tunnel? Don't tell me they had no way of knowing what the weather would be like when they planned things. Reno is a windy place all year round and any respectable meteorologist could have told them that if only they'd asked. Or perhaps they did ask but didn't care when they got the answer. Perhaps they were so busy falling all over themselves shouting, "They can bowl outside by the Reno Arch. How cool is THAT?!" that they didn't give the integrity of the bowlers and the competition a second thought.

I'm guessing they were thinking that bowling outside in that venue would inject a WOW factor that would put women's bowling on the map and draw more onlookers to the actual event as well as more viewers to the telecast. But is there any good reason or evidence to suggest that it would or did? How many extra viewers do they think the telecast actually drew because of where it took place, especially when the telecast was aired almost a week after the fact and everybody knew the outcome? Why do they keep showing these ballyhooed events a week or so late?. Yes, I've heard from someone who should know that showing these events live doesn't seem to affect the ratings any, but I'm not sure how they came to that definitive conclusion. I can't help but think that last year's finals in Cowboys Stadium with its one million dollar offer for a perfect game in the final match would have drawn more viewers had they been shown live.

I discussed this yesterday with someone very much in the bowling industry, and he said, as others have said, that they should have added the money they spent on constructing those outdoor lanes to the prize fund instead and held the finals in the ready-to-go National Bowling Stadium. That way, the finalists would have bowled on conditions at least similar to what they mastered to get them to the finals, they would still have been doing it in a great venue, and they could have used the special occasion to showcase the bowling stadium and talk about the extensive renovations planned for it that will make it an even more spectacular place for tournaments of every stripe in the years to come. Instead, they turned arguably the most prestigious women's bowling tournament on Earth into a freak show.

But, say some defenders of the format, they were all battling the same conditions, and, besides, the U.S. Open SHOULD be tough. Well, does this mean that we should move, say, the NHL Championship game to an outdoor parking lot filled with cracks and crevasses, outfit the players in antiquated field hockey gear and roller skates, and decide the championship THAT way? Or should we make the bowlers throw every shot between their legs to create that WOW factor and make it "tough" on them the way a U.S. Open should be?

Kelly Kulick averaged a blistering 240 + over qualifying and match play to achieve the top seed. Now maybe that was higher than the conditions of any U.S.Open worthy of the name should have allowed, but she should have been able to use the skills in the final match that brought her to it, and not have to resort to throwing plastic with no hand as straight as possible over 25 board and leaving 5-8-10's. The whole thing was a travesty.

As I said, and as you will see if you check out the videos below, the ladies were gracious afterward. And as I disclosed in a previous entry, some of them came to the defense of the BPAA, who sponsored and ran the tournament, because they were just grateful to get any chance to bowl for decent money anymore and were afraid that criticism could take even THAT away from them.

Well, what do you think? Do you think the BPAA will be scared away by all the criticism from sponsoring the event next year and nobody else will step up to the plate? Should we bowlers and bowling fans just keep our mouths shut, unless we have effusive praise for a bowling event and its sponsors, and just take it the way we get it and be happy that we get anything at all?

I think we can be pretty sure of one thing. If there is a U.S. Women's Open next year, and I pray that there is, the bowling ball manufacturers will probably make sure that they're held in a venue where the ladies can show off the latest, fanciest new balls on the market instead of ragged polyester equipment savaged by parking lot conditions. And hopefully the highest game of the stepladder finals will exceed 182.

You can watch the entire telecast in the first video below, followed by brief interviews with all the participants afterwards.

A U.S. Women's Open Finals That Will Live in Infamy?

You may not want to know who won the U.S. Women's Open last night under the blustery Reno sky. And if you don't, don't worry. I'm not going to tell you now, even though I think that if you're reading this blog, you're bound to find out soon enough whether you go looking for it or not. If you do want to know, I'm still not going to tell you here, but you can find out by clicking here.

However, I do want to say a few words about the finals in general. No, I didn't drive the 120 miles to Reno to see them, and they won't be airing on TV till next Tuesday evening (7/3, ESPN2, 8 PM Eastern). But I did the next best thing to seeing them. I followed the USBC's Lucas Wiseman's Twitter and Facebook updates, and what his terse tweets and posts made all too clear is that the championship finals of arguably the most prestigious women's bowling tournament in the world was predictably reduced by the gusty winds and swirling dust to a clownish farce.

Don't take my word for it. Here is some of Lucas Wiseman's rolling account of an unfolding bowling disaster:

It's rather windy out here, maybe sustained winds of 5-15 mph with occasional gusts. Temp is cooling off fast.

The wind is really picking up out here.

Lanes really hooking, players seem to be struggling a bit with the environment.

Both players are completely lost. Things are flying around, this is going to be a challenge.

The lanes are really hooking and you can visibly see dust and debris on the lane. Even spare balls are hooking a ton.

There's a discussion going on with the tournament director and the bowlers. Not sure what the issue is.

If I were bowling under these conditions, I would throw my spare ball at the headpin, try to make spares and shoot 180s.

She's throwing a plastic ball. Yes, plastic.

Nation makes a ball change and goes to plastic.

This is easily the strangest and most interesting TV finals I have ever seen. You won't want to miss it when it airs.

There have been 10 strikes out of 43 first-ball shots so far. And a few of those were Brooklyns.

Missy Parkin is also throwing a plastic ball. Looks like that is strategy the rest of the way for everyone.

The person who makes the most spares is going to win this title. Carry is not good with plastic.

Both players appear satisfied with just making spares at this point.

This is getting ugly. Four opens in a row between the two players.

Both players have gone with the fall back shot using plastic.

Kulick follows the double by leaving the 5-8-10. Figured we'd see one of those.

Of course, there were some who tried to minimize the ridiculousness of it all. One prominent guy in the bowling community opined that all televised finals are a "crap shoot" no matter what the conditions are. Others said that the BPAA executives who approved and planned the event had no way of knowing that the weather would be so inhospitable. And a lot of people said words to the effect that the conditions were the same for everybody and that real champions triumph over whatever challenges they face.

But one guy posted a very incisive and eloquent response, and I share that next after saying that I look forward to seeing the finals for myself and posting to this blog about it afterwards.

The bottom line is that the usbc [BPAA] is trying to cover up a problem with smoke and mirrors. Instead of fixing the problem, its "hey look, we are bowling outside, how cool is that?!" Now obviously anyone in the bowling industry knows it's not that easy, but it was allowed to get out of control. Challenging is one thing, but this has nothing to do with instincts or transition or adjustments. Sometimes things devolve into a flat out impossibility. "Oh they are pros, they should adjust." Not so much. Have you ever bowled on a dirt and debris covered lane? Dont think so. Yes everybody had to deal with it, but following a week of shotmaking, they were stuck with the biggest crap shoot in bowling history. They spent all that money on installing those lanes, when they had the national bowling stadium a few blocks away, just for THAT. Really feel bad for the competitors.

Elite Bowling Coverage Should be Better

Reno is now hosting the 2012 BPAA U.S. Women's Open at the National Bowling Stadium. Leanne Barrette-Hulsenberg is defending her championship that she won last year in the novel venue of Cowboys Stadium by defeating Kelly Kulick in the final match. This year's televised finals, albeit shown on ESPN2 six days after the fact, will be held in the even more unusual venue of outdoors under the famous Reno Arch.

As you can see from reading entries such as this, I covered last year's Open with considerable enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, I blogged a lot here about the PBA, women's tournaments, junior tournaments, international adult and junior tournaments, and bowling in general for a couple of years.

But I finally began to lose my enthusiasm not for the sport so much as for the haphazard way the bowling industry itself seems to conduct and promote it. I figured if they didn't care enough to do a better job of promoting, covering, and fostering elite level bowling in this country and, as a result, people don't care that much about the sport to follow it, why should I bother to blog about it? Why even people who call themselves bowling fans seem to suffer from a serious enthusiasm problem, and very few appear to regularly watch bowling telecasts much less read blogs such as this one, so, again, why should I spend a lot of time writing blogposts when almost no one cares enough to read them?

As an example of my displeasure with the way the bowling industry is handling their sport, I posted the following comment just a few minutes ago to the USBC's Facebook wall in connection with their coverage of this year's Open. It echoes, to a considerable degree, this blogpost of mine from a while back. A PBA representative took private issue with that blogpost. He said the bowling industry is doing all it reasonably can to promote the PBA and bowling in general. What do you think?

Elite  women's and, for that matter, men's bowling is in a sad state in this country even as it seems to be growing in popularity in other parts of the world. I agree...that the PBA seems to be hanging on by its fingernails, and there's certainly no indication that any kind of women's professional tour will be coming back. And although many will disagree with me, I think part of the reason for this is that the bowling industry has not made as concerted an attempt as it might to publicize and popularize the sport but, rather, continues on with business as depressingly usual.

I'm not sure what it would take, but maybe if they hired the best PR and advertising minds to barrage the media with compelling commercials, human interest stories, and intelligent and entertaining treatments of bowling, rather than the occasional clownish parody, in television series and movies, more participants and viewers could be brought into the fold. As it is now, bowling and bowlers "don't get no respect," and they should, if people had any idea how challenging bowling really is at the elite level.

One thing I find so disheartening is that bowling seems to get so little respect even from bowling organizations and sponsors. For instance, the BPAA, God bless 'em, is sponsoring the U.S. Women's Open, yet they don't seem to be willing or able to get the finals aired live. We have to wait several days after the fact to see them, and, of course, by then only the most hardcore bowling fan will tune in because everyone else with any interest in the results but not enough to watch a seriously delayed broadcast AFTER learning the results will already know the results and won't bother. What's more, the USBC website's coverage of the tournament seems like a confusing maze. Their videos are great, and Lucas's herculean one-man coverage is to be roundly applauded, but where the hell are the results encompassing ALL the bowlers and not just the top 49? And why can't the BPAA and/or USBC, in the interests of fan interest, provide help to Lucas and the USBC website in tracking results as they occur instead of us having to wait hours to find out how the bowlers are scoring?

If even national bowling organizations and sponsors don't respect their sport enough to give it professional level coverage, how can they expect the public at large to respect it enough to follow it and participate in it? We need a real shakeup in the bowling industry in this country, or elite level bowling here seems all but doomed!

Why Weren't the 2011 U.S. Women's Open Finals Shown Live?

I know who won the U.S. Women's Open last night, and I'd love to be able to write about it here today. But I don't want to spoil it for any of you who wish to wait until you watch the show tomorrow to find out. If you read this blog, you probably know already or will know well before the show airs, but I still don't want to risk spoiling it for anyone.

Of course, if this were not a blog about bowling, and I wanted to write about what happened in the finals of the U.S. Women's Open in tennis or golf the morning after, I wouldn't need to wait. It would likely have been shown live on one of the major networks, and sports headlines around the country if not the world would have blared the results minutes afterward.

But, as we all know, that's not how it is with bowling. Bowling is the Rodney Dangerfield of sports. More people do it on some level or other than probably any other sport, but it "don't get no respect" by the media or, it seems, by the public at large.

That being said, I'm puzzled by something. Bowling may not get much respect, but we're still taking here about the U.S. Women's Open. Not only that, but we're talking about a U.S. Women's Open finals held in the grandest venue--Cowboys Stadium--in which ANY bowling tournament, men's or women's, has EVER been held. Not only that, but it attracted the largest field of any U.S. Women's Open ever, almost 300, from 17 countries, and offered the richest prize fund ever. And to top all that off, it offered a monumental $1 million to anyone who shot 300 in the championship match.

It seems to me that the sponsors of this great tournament--the BPAA and Ebonite International--pulled out all the stops to build interest in this wonderful tournament and its stepladder finals and to draw viewers to television coverage of the finals except for the one measure that might have been the most effective. They were unable or unwilling to do whatever it took to have the finals shown live instead of two days after they took place.

Now just how many people do you think are going to spend Saturday afternoon or evening (depending on your time zone) of a Fourth of July weekend watching a women's bowling tournament of which almost everyone who'd be likely to watch already knows the results? And how many people do you think are going to be drawn to watch by the prospect of seeing whether someone wins the $1 million if they already know whether or not someone won it two days go?

Yes, hardcore bowling fans and bloggers like me will watch no matter what. Besides, I have a horse, so to speak, in the race. Leanne Hulsenberg and her husband Gary bowl league and have a pro shop in my home house. Of course, I want this already legendary bowler to win the one women's major that has so far eluded her during her remarkable career. But there apparently aren't too many like me. As I wrote yesterday, even the preponderance of fairly serious bowlers and self-proclaimed bowling fans appear to be afflicted with a chronic case of the ho-hums. So how many of THEM are going to watch the finals on a holiday weekend or even record it to watch it later when they already know who won, what all the scores were, and whether or not the champion shot 300?

I don't want to be overly critical of the BPAA and Ebonite, mind you. After all, if they hadn't stepped in and rescued a tournament that the USBC abandoned after last year, there'd have been no U.S. Women's Open this year or perhaps ever again. I'm grateful to them. And if I'M grateful to them, just imagine how grateful the women are who cashed or who made the finals of the tournament!

And I'll be the first to admit that I don't know anything about securing live television time on ESPN2 or any other network any time of the day or night. Perhaps it was all but impossible to work out logistically or financially. Yet, it seems to me that there had to have been a way to show the grandest women's bowling tournament ever live, and that someone blew it somewhere, somehow in its not happening.

I don't know what the future holds for the U.S. Women's Open. But if it has a future, I hope I get to see the finals of the next one and of all the ones thereafter live on television and to blog here about them immediately thereafter.

On the off chance that you don't know who won the Open but want to know now instead of trying to hold out until you watch it tomorrow, or perhaps you won't or can't watch it tomorrow, you can click here for a recap of the finals. If you want to watch or record the finals tomorrow, they will be shown Saturday, July 2 on ESPN2 in HD at 6 PM Eastern.

More on the 2011 Women's U.S. Open

"This is an incredible moment for both women’s sports and the bowling industry and an opportunity for Bowling’s U.S. Women’s Open to rightfully take center stage before worldwide audiences. Bowling’s U.S. Women’s Open is an event that sits at the pinnacle of women’s athletics. It’s both thrilling and gratifying that this event and its great women athletes – who I am proud to call my competitors – will be catapulted into the spotlight in 2011."

--Kelly Kulick

If you want to learn more about next year's Women's U.S. Open, you can click here to see the official BPAA press release about it.