PBA News

Two days before last Christmas, Tom Smallwood found himself, like millions of Americans, jobless and wondering how he would support his family.

Cassidy Schaub reacts after throwing a strike on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, at Northrock.

The recognition keeps arriving for Liz Kuhlkin. A Schalmont junior who already was selected as one of 30 high school "bowlers to watch" by Bowlers Journal, Kuhlkin has been honored by the U.S. Bowling Congress for having the high standard-league average in the country last season among girls.

Jack Jurek won his second PBA tour event earlier this year and wa able to watch it when it was broadcast Sunday afternoon on tape delay.

When the Professional Bowlers Association announced the All-In Action Sweeper side event during last summer's World Series of Bowling, the $5,000 winner-take-all entry fee created a buzz in the bowling community.

Time is running short for bowlers to "partner up" in the annual GLUSBC Handicap Mixed Doubles tournament, sponsored by Added Space Self Storage and Loper Welding Service.

Lockport's Brad Angelo is among 63 of the world's greatest bowlers who will compete Jan.

The sport of bowling doesn't really have to be as complicated a game as it appears to be.

One thing a retired Ernie Schlegel does not need to do at age 66 is get up early on a Saturday morning to root on bowlers at a local youth league.

The daily experience of most boys is characterized by sights and sounds that will linger in their memories for life: the shriek of a referee's whistle at a flag football game, the wads of gum they chew in little league dugouts, the crashing of pins at a Saturday morning youth league.

AMERICAN pro bowler Walter Ray Williams Jr will only think of retiring if he does not make the top 40 in the PBA Tour when it ends in April.

Mike Scroggins played ''follow the leader'' when he succeeded Norm Duke as U.S. Open champion in April.

Jenny Bostock, Matt Friend, and Troy Morgan had to endure three weekends of competition spanning four long weeks before the final curtain fell on the 27th Annual Texas State USBC Mixed Tournament last weekend.

The Medford stop on the Professional Bowlers Association Tour had been as stable as a stubborn 10-pin despite constant change in the sport.

Former Professional Bowlers Association Senior Tour star John Handegard and longtime Women's International Bowling Congress Sergeant-at-Arms Betty Barnes have been elected to the United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame by the USBC Hall of Fame Committee.

Top players from the Professional Bowlers Association's seven regions will be in Reno for the 40th anniversary PBA Regional Players Invitational, held Dec.

When Jason Belmonte first used two hands to throw a bowling ball down the lane as a boy, no one could have foreseen that twenty years later he would light the bowling world on fire with an excitement that the sport has not quite seen since the days when Mark Roth tore through the Tour with little more than a plastic ball and a mangled thumb.

Yet another Professional Bowlers Association season is upon us -- I know, I know, where does the time go? -- and it is stuffed with more story lines than Don Draper's secret lives. Here are three that keep me dreaming of converting 7-10 splits:

-- There is a left-hander, the irrepressible Rhino Page, who remains my Bowler of Destiny.

-- There is a right-hander, the incomparable Walter Ray Williams Jr., who remains the best bowler of our time.

-- And there is a two-hander, the inconceivable Jason Belmonte, who, yes, delivers the ball two-handed.

USBC Hall of Famer Bill Lillard has seen the sport of bowling grow and evolve over the last six decades, and this weekend, he helped usher The Next Revolution, a USBC event, into Houston's Copperfield Bowling Center.

In December of 2000 I wrote about Al Jones, a young man one year after he had a double lung transplant.