PRODIGY BOWLERS TOUR -- 2024 KCO February Point Tournament Division 1 

good show as always. im hoping to find my way into the show in march. congrats to all the bowlers and, as always, good bowling everyone

@@2handnation -- Jacob Smith, you remain one of the most enthusiastic young bowlers I know. And you're always eager to help us schlep the video equipment in and out of the bowling center, which is the most reliable way of getting your presence on the show....in the closing credits as a Production Assistant. Good luck on the lanes next weekend in Olathe. I'll see you there.

@ProdigyBowlersTour ill see you there, Randy!

@ayakawa2692 -- Please post any responses to the existing thread rather than starting a whole new thread with each subsequent comment. You're entitled to your opinion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Where I took exception with you was where you accused me of being "a detriment to bowling." That was insulting, personal, and completely baseless. I spend 35 to 40 hours of my personal time editing each and every episode of PRODIGY. That's 161 episodes so far...and counting...over nearly 8 years. And you call me a "detriment" to bowling? Are you serious? For the record, I'm not opposed to people bowling string pins if that's the only type of bowling that's available to them. The people I'm opposed to are the proprietors who will RUIN bowliing by replacing their bowling pinsetters with string pin pinsetters. They will kill the sport. If they can't afford to pay their labor costs, then they need to get into another line of work, because a well-run bowling center can make money while paying their labor costs and other bills. Bowling centers all across America are proving that every day. By the way, don't be surprised if your daughter doesn't get to bowl string pins very often at college. Most schools bowl ACTUAL BOWLIING at college. Look, this channel -- these videos that I make -- are about youth bowling. The mission of the show PRODIGY BOWLERS TOUR is to "Celebrate Junior Bowling and Elevate Junior Bowlers." The channel doesn't exist to provide a general bowling discussioon forum. If you want to make a comment here about the show you see on the channel, or the bowlers bowling on it (without leaving a spoiler, of course), that's great. But I'm really not interested in having people poison the water here with general bowling discussion and debates over such divisive issues as string pin bowling, which is detested by most bowlers. I have no interest in furthering this discussion with a contentious debate, especially when one side (you) calls the other side (me) "a detriment to bowling." How else would you expect me to respond to an accusation like that? And so far, I've heard nothing from you to walk it back.

Thank you, April, for your kind words. Hope to see you and Gage once again at the March Point Tournament in Olathe next weekend!

@@ProdigyBowlersTourwe will be there!

They never cease to amaze me, either.

Thank you for checking in. I *love* hearing from PRODIGY viewers who follow the show from outside this country, around the world. Thanks for watching!

I think you'll enjoy this one. A strong cast of bowlers, some very close matches, and a deserving winner.

In November 2021 when I first moved from Georgia to the Kansas City area, I explored many different options for how and where might might do PRODIGY in the format our viewers were familiar with when production was suspended at the start of the pandemic in 2020. But I discovered a fundamental problem that we would have to overcome here in KC. Specifically, there just aren't as many bowling centers in operation here. The Atlanta metro has 25 of 30 bowling centers, giving the market more than enough lane beds in operation to make it possible for me to find a bowling center that could make 8-12 lanes available to us on Saturday afternoons. But here in the KC area, there are no 40-lane houses like Roswell (you have to go to Lawrence, KS to find the nearest 40-lane center, and the centers in the KC metro are all 24 to 32 lane centers). So the simple reality is, the bowling centers are too busy on Saturday afternoons to set aside 8-12 lanes for me to stage a PRODIGY event each week. Besides, I found that doing the show weekly would eventually burn it out with kids. At the end of our run in Atlanta, the Roswell kids were getting bored with it and weren't taking the competition seriously enough to make it worth doing. I never wanted PRODIGY to be a "silly" thing. The formats were wacky, and that was by design. But the COMPETITION was supposed to be serious (or as serious as it could be given that there was no big prize involved with winning). I found that our best option here in KC was to partner with the Kansas City Open, a tournament series that has been around since 1996 here in the KC area. They had been made aware of PRODIGY and had been looking for a way to add some excitement and get some publicity for their tournament. And I was looking for a way to keep PRODIGY going here. So it wasa a marriage made in heaven. Prior to leaving Georgia, I had kicked around the idea (privately with some bowling parents) of converting PRODIGY into a real-deal tournament series and awarding scholarship money or Junior Gold spots or somethng -- something meaningful, all in an effort to give PRODIGY a greater air of legitimacy. While I enjoyed the crazy, wacky formats as much as anybody, it was never my desire to make the show seem silly or like a "game show." It was supposed to be kids bowling a competition. The "Unofficial, Informal and Impromptu" nature of our "after league challenge matches" sprung out of how the show came to exist. These kids would stay after league, hold a short, one- or two-game qualifier to seed themselves into a stepladder, and they'd bowl that stepladdere EVEN BEFORE I EVER PUT A CAMERA ON THEM. Sometimes I'd even stay and bowl with them. I just got the bright idea to ask the parents permission to film their kids and put them on RU-vid, and the show just took on a life of its own. But at my age, doing a show every week just became too much. It takes 35 to 40 hours to edit a single episode of PRODIGY. Doing FOUR of them per month was just unsustainable. It ground me into a fine powder. Interestingly, I'll be doing four shows in March, as the KCO holds not one, but TWO tournaments, two weeks apart, in the month of March. But I can probably do that if it's only one month a year. I simply wouldn't want to do a show a week on a regular basis. I've considered doing a PRODIGY "Unofficial, Informal, and Impromptu Special" and just take the show somewhere and invite their Saturday league kids to stage an event like we used to do. But it would be very infrequent. And as the months have passed and I've grown older, I've just gotten to the point where doing two shows per month (the undercard division and a Division 1 show each month) feels about right. At 71, I'm not really interested in working any more than I already am.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour have you considered getting a team of people to help edit and speed up production time? (if they are not already are you looking for more editors) If you were given an alley and the means to do so would you consider making prodigy a real tournament like you mentioned you were interested in? I'm a ks bowler and the heart of america tournaments are the only thing somewhat close to the original prodigy concept. It would be really interesting to see prodigy grow to reach more bowlers!

@@OneHandedBowling -- Most everyone I know who does video editing would either not want to touch doing what I do with PRODIGY, or would charge an arm and a leg to do it. And frankly, there's so much involved in it, I probably wouldn't trust anyone else to do it. I certainly don't have a budget of any kind to pay them. So, no, I'm not seeking a team of editors. I think you miss the point of what the original PRODIGY concept was. It was intended as nothing more than a way to promote our youth program at Brunswick Zone Roswell to help grow the league. It did help us to attract a number of kids to join our league. And still more continued bowling where they'd always bowled league, but then would have their parents drive them over to join us for PRODIGY at around 1 PM each Saturday. The wacky formats were far more a part of the show, in my view, than were the oil patterns. Overall, I'd say we still bowled on the house shot about 30-35 percent of the time, maybe more. I do miss some of the wacky formats, and I may occasionally seek out a way to add those to the mix. But remember, I'm committed to two episodes of PRODIGY per month as part of my partnership with the KCO. If I were to occasionally find a bowling center that was willing to host an "Unofficial, Informal and Impromptu" episode of PRODIGY Old Skool, it would add a third show to my workload that month, and honestly, two shows a month feels about right to me. I'm 71, and I'm really not looking to add more work. I couild possibly do one or two events in July and August. But remember, in July, most of the better bowlers are gone to Junior Gold. And I really like having two months a year -- July and August -- when I don't have to work on PRODIGY. Everybody likes having some time off. Don't you? If you are under the impression that these kids are bowling on a "dead easy" house shot on the KCO PRODIGY, I would challenge you to come to one of our tapings. Right after the stepladders finish, snag a pair of lanes we'd been bowling on and see for yourself just how "easy" they are. They're oiled once in the morning before "A" squad bowls its morning block. Then "B" squad bowls their morning block. Then "A" bowls their afternoon block, "B" returns for their afternoon block. And finally, the stepladder finals are held. But the lanes had been oiled just once for the day, prior to "A" Squad going off in the morning. The lanes are burned. And with bowlers from all squads and all skill levels bowling on them all day, they are anything but "easy." Come find out for yourself. Really, the only "format" I truly miss from the old PRODIGY is the Single Ball Eliminator. That's why I incorporate it into the format of our PRODIGY Tournament of Champions, which is the final event of the season in June. Check it out here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hdYJNjjElY8.htmlsi=6EjSWMnfbCYVeLwN If I were to do a free-standing PRODIGY Old Skool, it might be to do our Halloween format (my favorite format we would do). I also enjoyed the "Seventh Frame Sweat" and a couple of others like "Suicide No-Tap," "Pinpoint," and the "Best Ball Doubles" format. But of all of them my favorite was the Single Ball Elimination. Countless players told me they'd never felt pressure quite like the pressure they felt bowling in one of those.

@yBowlersTour not under the impression that house shot is hard, you've coached me before after league once. I've bowled several KCO's and won (mostly low divisions before prodigy was added to it). After hs season might make a show in division 1 but for the moment winning state is my main concern. I originally discovered the show in about 2016 when the charlie vs logan videos were being put up and I've been keeping up with prodigy for awhile and I'd wondered if that old format would ever come back in some form or another. Sad to see that editors wouldn't want to work with you at all, I would help although my editing skills I'm sure do not meet your personal requirements. Thanks for sticking with the show all these years hopefully prodigy will continue to bring in more youth bowlers into the sport of competitive bowling!

I agree. Although I can tell you that I've bowled in centers where the end pairs (or at least one of them) was decidedly different than the rest of the house. I can tell you that at Bowlero Roswell, where PRODIGY originated in 2016, lanes 1 and 2 (which we never used on PRODIGY, although we did often use the end pair on the high end) were very different. And lane 1 in particular hooked about 5-7 boards more than any other lane in the house. I theorized that it might be because the lane sat just a few feet from the west-facing wall of the bowling center, and the hot Georgia sun set on that side of the bowling center, heating up that side of the building (and specifically, the ground). But I had some very high series on that pair, so suffice it to say I figured out how to bowl that pair. It's often just a mental block. People just BELIEVE they can't score on an end pair, so they don't. But to me, I always liked bowling on the end pair. It meant tht at least on the end lane, I'd never have to worry about anyone on that side distracting me.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour Thanks for the feedback. BTW... I was watching the NW Missouri Senior Bowlers Tour on YT (I watch too much bowling) held at that venue and the guys doing the commentary remarked on the lighting in the building. Their opinion was that it was too dark, and the lights gave odd reflections off the lanes. I compared that video with PBT and it was darker. Evidently they didn't adjust the camera to account for the lower light levels.

@@blockcl -- They probably aren't using a high-end camera for their recordings. (Neither do I.) As a result, the iris will only open so much to allow for only a certain amount of light to come in. In as dark a bowling center as Crown Lanes, you really need a higher end camera that will allow for more light to get in. Your comment prompted me to produce a short video showing just how dark it really is inside Crown Lanes. That's not a criticism of their bowling center. Their bowling center is fine. It's just a bit under-lit. Not so much so that you'll walk into walls or anything (LOL), but their lighting certainly doesn't take into account the possibility of people filming anything. Interestingly, I shot some iPhone footage (and all the still images you see on the show of the players competing in the stepladder are taken on my iPhone), and the iPhone takes in plenty of light. Anyway, I think this might interest you: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s-2V4j90VtE.htmlsi=EyjLYvP_ukR3TX06

@@ProdigyBowlersTourThat's a startling difference. I've been in my share of dark bowling alleys, but it was mostly way back when, in places that could generously be described as "dumps" (I think anyone over 65 with a long bowling history remembers the kind of places I'm talking about). Never seen it that dark as a default setting in a modern bowling center. It must be a conscious choice by management.

@@blockcl -- Well, to be fair, the camcorders I use for PRODIGY will only allow for the iris to open to f3.4. More modern cameras -- even ones comparably priced -- will open quite a bit wider.

You obviously don't know much about video production. If you went to a video production company, showed them an episode of PRODIGY, and asked what they'd charge to do it as a LIVE stream, the bid would come back for somewhere between ten and twenty thousand dollars PER EPISODE. I do it for the KCO for $0.00. I couldn't possibly deliever a show with the production qualities of PRODIGY and do it LIVE. Just not possible. Not without spending a lot of money. There are tournaments that provide a live stream, and they usually look like what you'd get if you set up an unmanned camcorder, let it roll, and add nothing more to it. Just a bare bones video with no graphics, no play-by-play, no scoring on the screen, no music. I would never in a million years put my name or the PRODIGY brand on a crap production like that. What makes PRODIGY PRODIGY is its production values. It looks as much like a network television production -- at least it looks as much like that as it can, given the production budget of $0. To do that LIVE would require a staff of cameramen, sound people, and someone to monitor the connectivity. PRODIGY is a one-man operation (I do have someone help me bring the equiipment in and out and set it up and break it down. But the actual setup of the cameras, and the editing of the show is all done by one person, me.) We record two shows simultaneously and edit them in the weeks after, giving us two shows per month. This is the 161st episode of PRODIGY (we're in Season 8, dating back to 2016 when I launched the show in Atlanta). No one has ever asked why we don't do it live. But the answer should be obvious: To do a credible job and make it look as professional as I insist that it look, it would be cost-prohibitive to do it as a live stream.

Lo

@@ProdigyBowlersTourI wish I could come out. I’m 13 with a 195 average😢

@@Eggdragon691 Why can’t you come out? Check out our previous episode, Episode 160. On that episode, we had a kid travel all the way from Yakima, Washington to come bowl in the KCO. He almost made the stepladder finals!.

@@ProdigyBowlersTouridk I’ll ask my mom😂

Nah

Last and Always.

I'm still in touch with all three of them. Charlie and Christian have both aged out of youth bowling. Charlie bowls for Webber University and Christian is now working at a Toyota dealership in suburban Atlanta selling cars. And Hunter is now one of the top youth bowlers in the state of Georgia. He's still got another couple of years of eligibility in youth bowling before he ages out. One of these days I should really start doing some Zoom interviews with some of our PRODIGY alums to let good people like you keep up with what they're doing these days. When we stage the PRODIGY Tournament of Champions in June, the kids in the Handicap Division will be vying for the Hunter Moffitt Award, and the kids in the scratch Division wil be vying for the Charles Bostic Award, on their way to contending for the Coveted Trophy Pin. To see them, check out the 2023 PRODIGY TOC, which is up on RU-vid right now.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour Excellente idée. Et je vous en remercie. On suit des années ces enfants et puis un jour " Plouf " ils disparaissent. C'est frustrant.....je n'ai pas pu les citer tous. Il y a aussi Logan Fossum et puis beaucoup d'autre y compris des filles dont j'ai oublié les noms. Veuillez m'en excuser. Votre émission Prodige Bowlers Tour est vraiment unique et intéressante. Je les ai toutes regardées et certaines plusieurs fois. Je les partage aussi avec des jeunes et moins jeunes. J'espère que vous aller continuer longtemps .....merci encore . Alors Bonne boules à tous vos jeunes...quelle belle famille vous avez. Je suis une mamie de 78 ans qui joue au bowling seulement depuis 8 ans. Je m'entraine 3 fois par semaine pendant 3h sans compter les ligues et les tournois. Et je n'ai pas dis mon dernier mot. Pour le moment je suis à 165 de moy. Bonne Dimanche Mr.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour Pour les interviews , il faudra des sous-titres pour que je puisse traduire plus facilement . Je ne maitrise pas très bien l'anglais et j'utilise le traducteur.

@@marie-charlottedufour380 -- I don't know what to tell youi about that. PRODIGY is an English-language show, and most, if not all, of the kids speak English as their native tongue. If I were to provide translations for interviews, I would need to do it for ALL languages, not just yours, as we have viewers all around the world. I certainly appreciate you watching, but I can't promise that we'll ever be providing translations.

@@ProdigyBowlersTour Excusez moi , je comprends bien que vous ne puissiez pas traduire en toutes les langues. Je me suis mal expliquée , juste sous-titrer la vidéo en anglais et moi j'utiliserai le traducteur. Ferez-vous encore quelques vidéos avec les très jeunes joueurs, c'est intéressant de voir les progrès . J'ai regardé hier soir Hunter tout jeune....il y avait déjà de la graine de bon joueur , malgré ses difficultés à lancer la boule. Merci de m'avoir répondu. Petite question indiscrète " "comment va votre chien ?"......pendant le confinement on avait fait sa connaissance.