This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, July, 2017
What have you been doing the past two months? And what will you do the next two months? Welcome to July, the month with the dubious distinction of being as far away as possible from league bowling’s traditional season. Two months ago, you rolled your last ball. Two months from now, you’ll roll your first ball. In between, we all bear the dreaded inescapable abyss of not being able to bowl league. With evenings free, hamstrings not fatigued and mental health growing, we have no idea what to do with ourselves.
Sure, you can get your bowling fix by watching the PBA Tour, PBA50 Tour, PWBA Tour and more on Xtra Frame, ESPN and CBS Sports Network, but you’re not actually bowling. And yes, you can go to the lanes and throw a few, or you can enter the USBC Open Championships for a nice weekend of fun and experiences, but unless you’re a high-level competitive bowler, those things are all fleeting, short-term solutions to a nagging problem: you physically can’t function if you are not going to the lanes and bowling three games once a week (rather, it’s probably more accurate to say several times a week) in a USBC-sanctioned league.
Perhaps you joined a summer league, which is a good idea, but everyone knows summer leagues aren’t the same. The weather is different, the participants are different and the overall vibe is different. The first week of summer league feels a lot like the time you found out Aunt Susan wasn’t really your aunt: weird, confusing and a little frightening. We should all bowl in summer leagues, and they’re fun, but there’s nothing quite like the traditional 900-week season that begins after Labor Day.
“I get antsy,” says one forlorn league bowler. “Every Tuesday night, I feel like I need to be doing something, and when I realize it’s bowling, I frantically pack up all my equipment and am usually out of the driveway before I remember bowling season is over.”
He does this weekly for four excruciating months, never actually making the full trek to the bowling center despite the fact he’s already in the car with his armoire of bowling balls.
“There’s just nothing like league,” he continues. “I can bowl alone, but who’s going to vouch for my 6-7-10 conversions? Who’s going to chastise me for rolling a 2-pin?”
What do you do with your surplus of time? You could clean out your basement, paring your arsenal to the important pieces for league season and disposing of the rest. Except you can’t get rid of that ball—it’s your first 300 ball. And you can’t get rid of this ball—it converted the big four once. And this one? The first ball you ever hated. You definitely can’t trash the first ball that ever irreparably cracked. With the sentimental value being so immense, it’s best to leave these never-to-be-rolled-again treasures on the rack and buy a whole new batch of equipment when the late-summer releases hit the pro shops.
Perhaps you could take your family on a multi-week vacation, but then you’ll be tempted to buy a motorhome, fill it with all those bowling balls and subconsciously plot a course that for some reason takes you to Overland Park, Peoria, Milwaukee, Towson, Atlantic City, Windsor Locks and Akron. In that order. Your kids will be almost as confused as you are.
If you have the ability, maybe try hibernating. Go home after your league banquet in April or May, burrow into a cave and sleep until bowling returns in September.
For now, at least you’ve made it this far. Just two months of nothing to go.