PRODIGY BOWLERS TOUR -- 2023 KCO October Points Tournament Division 1 

hey, Coach Randy! I'm glad to see the division 1 guys watching it rn. I just thought I'd tell you I've gotten a high school bowling team recently, and we just finished 2nd at a tournament with me leading the charge. and I can't wait to see you at the November KCO

@@2handnation -- Jacob, I always enjoy seeing you. Congrats on your HS performance. And let's see you have another great showing at the KCO-NOV. See you there!

Why do you say that?

@@ProdigyBowlersTour I’d rather not explain it here on RU-vid

@@realethanangell -- Well, then you can send me a private email through the website www.prodigybowlerstour.com/connect The curiosity is killing me. 🙂

1. I'm not sure I can give you an "average size" of the field. For one thing, it depends on the size of the bowling center. What I can say is, there was an event on last season's calendar (I want to say it was the March Points Tournament) that became the first ever "Points Tournament" to be totall sold out. And when I say "totally sold out," I mean not only were all the spots reserved, but everyone who reserved a spot showed up and bowled. Therefore, every spot taken was paid for. Most of the bowling centers here are either 24 or 32 lanes. In November and January, we'll bowl at Royal Crest Lanes in Lawrence, KS, which is a 40-lane center. But we'll only have 32 lanes allocated to the tournament. Routinely, if we have, say, 32 lanes allotted to the tournament, that'll give us the potential of 150 bowlers. Or if it's a 24-lane center, the field would be capped at 110 bowlers. How those bowlers shake out in terms of how many fall into each division can vary wildly. I've seen months where Division 3 was the biggest division in the tournament, and other times when Division 1 was the biggest. During January and February, when Kansas high school bowling is going on (when the Kansas kids are prohibited from bowling in leagues or tournaments), I'm told there have been months when they didn't have enough Division 1 kids to even fill out a stepladder, so they'd combine Divisions 1 and 2. (Hasn't happened since I've been here.) 2. During qualifying, there's an A squad and a B squad. Players in each squad bowl 3 games in the morning and 3 games in the afternoon. During the morning block, players will bowl all three games on the same pair of lanes. Then they get a different lane assignment for the afternoon block, where they'll bowl their three afternoon games on the same pair of lanes. Surprisingly, it's usually Division 1 that's last to finish, both in qualifying and during the stepladder finals. They just take more time between shots.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour Thanks for the information. I was mostly curious about the format. It's too bad that KCO doesn't put the 1s (and maybe the 2s) on a sport pattern. I suppose it's deemed unworkable by KCO and the host centers. A lot of the 1s are really polished players and deserve more of a challenge.

@@blockcl The way it's been explained to me is that some bowling centers are more willing than others to put out a sport shot, but that in some cases, they'd want to charge the KCO extra $$ to do so, and the Board of Directors has deemed it better to keep all that extra money in the kitty so they have the maximum amount available to pay out to the kids in scholarship prizes at the end, particularly for the final payouts at the end of the season. There is another group in the area known as the HOA (Heart of America Youth Classic) that holds a tournament about every other month. Their format is different in that theirs is a two-day tournament, with a format similar to the old PBA Regionals I used to bowl in the '70s with qualifying on Saturday and sunday, then a cut to round robin match play, and then a stepladder. They DO bowl on sport shots. And you know what? It's usually the same cast of characters who dominate. In my experience, most USBC tournaments (not the national tournaments like Junior Gold or the Open, but most all city and state tournaments held by local and state USBC associations) are held on house shots. I don't have a problem with the KCO doing that. Frankly, I get sick of seeing every tournament held on sport patterns that seem so difficult, it almost appears that they're designed to embarrass the contestants. This seems almost cruel sometimes when the contestants are kids. A good example of that was the Georgia Pepsi Tournament, which always used just about the most demanding sport pattern these kids would see all year, despite the fact that most junior league bowlers would qualify to bowl in the Pepsi, including lower average players. It always seemed downright stupid to me to have a format that allows most everyone who bowls league in the state to bowl in the event, and then have the lanes so difficult that a lot of kids would leave the tournament embarrassed, discouraged, and in many cases, in tears. What's the point of that? How does that benefit the kids? Or for that matter, how does it benefit the sport of bowling? The Chairman of the KCO is also on the board of the Wy-John USBC (Wyandotte and Johnson County Kansas USBC association), and is part of the team that runsmost of their tournaments. This weekend, the Wy-John Juior Classic is going on at KC Bowl in Kansas City, KS. Like the Greater Atlanta USBC back in Georgia would hold all their local annual tournaments on house shots, the Wy-John USBC here does the same. So it's wrong-headed to say that all tournaments are held on sport shots. In the case of the KCO, they oil the lanes once in the morning before the A Squad bowls its morning block of qualifying games, and the lanes are not oiled again for the duration of the tournament. So consider, with a field of 110 or 150 bowlers, FOUR squads of bowling takes place on the lanes (A Squad morning block, B Squad morning block, A Squad Afternoon Block, B Squad Afternoon Block), and then the stepladder finals is held. Again, the lanes are not oiled again for the stepladder. They're only run the lanes once in the morning before the first squad of qualifying and that's it. So to characterized the lanes as "easy" is completely wrong. They might be easier in the morning, but the rest of the day -- and certainly by the time the stepladder is held in the afternoon -- they're completely burned. Maybe if all the bowlers in the field were 200 average bowlers you could say the lanes break down in a way that benefits all the players, but with kids of all skill levels bowling on the lanes, the oil pattern does NOT break down in a way that benefits the field. They have to bowl well to get good results. (It's worth noting that it's not like the Division 1 group only bowls on a particular group of lanes in the center. They might bowl in one area of the center in the morning block, but then in the afternoon block, they might bowl in a completely different section of the bowling center.) Plus, everybody in the field is bowling on the same oil, so there's no one player who gains an edge over the field by virtue of the fact that the lanes are oiled in any one particular way.