INTERCOLLEGIATE BOWLING
CHAMPIONSHIPS SECTIONAL

Holiday Bowl-Brainerd, Chattanooga , TN

By: John Forst

March is the time of the year when winter turns to spring and athletes become champions in college sports. The weekend of March 18-20 was the first hurdle for collegiate bowlers to make their dreams come true. The IBC sectionals were held around the country and I covered the tournament at Holiday Bowl-Brainerd in Chattanooga , Tennessee . The center has 15 year old Brunswick Anvilane lane beds, which were in pretty good shape for a high linage center. The conditioner was Prodigy and we used Fizzion for the lane cleaner. Each of the sectionals used a Kustodien Plus.

The tournament is divided into two parts. It begins with a singles tournament where the top four from each sectional will go to Milwaukee in mid May for the Collegiate Singles Championship. This tournament filled the house as 79 men and 56 women battled for the chance to move on. We were instructed to have a totally different pattern for both tournaments. We choose a pattern that we had used in the Commonwealth Games that was 43 feet long and should have been played inside the track area. In my region, I was told not to discuss any of the particulars of the patterns with any of the players and coaches so everyone would have an equal chance. The results are below and congratulations to Matthew and Stacey on winning this event:

The team event had 13 men's teams and 12 women's teams trying to advance to the finals that will be held in April in Rockford Illinois . Only the top four in each division will move on. Since the lane surface is 15 years old we were able to use the new Sport Bowling rule for conditioning which is 2 1/2 to 1 between the center boards (18 to 18) and the outside boards of the lane (3-7). The pattern was 38 feet long and most of the players started either trying to feed the track or playing up the outside boards. Congratulations to Pikeville College for winning both male and female ends of the qualifier.