This Dream Team would lead bowling to prominence - Striking Out

Bowling Digest, Dec, 2002 by Dick Evans

JUST FOR FUN, I'M NAMING MY Dream Team, which will lead bowling out of the wilderness and into the promised land under the direction of the United States Bowling Association.

These eight talented people could brilliantly lead the USBA into the future: the ABC's Roger Dalkin and Jack Mordini, the PWBA's Jan Schmidt, Texas Station's Bea Goodwin, the PBA's Steve Miller, Storm's Barbara Chrisman, Pinacle Events' Steve Sanders, and supercoach Jeri Edwards.

They all meet my a-b-c stipulations for consideration:

a) Articulate speakers. A winning personality. A genuine love and knowledge of many facets of the game.

b) Bring new views. Bright futures. Breeze through problems.

c) Consistently display good common sense. Can think on their feet. Can impress the people on Madison Avenue.

And, oh yes, they all have to be younger than 60, so they can have eyes to the future. Because I don't know everyone's age, I tried to avoid anybody who I thought was closing in on age 60 and Social Security.

My Dream Team is led by Dalkin--a man who could sell grass to the owner of a lake--and is assisted by Schmidt and Mordini. They should be the three executives charged with making sure the USBA not only survives, but thrives. The remaining five--Goodwin, Miller, Chrisman, Sanders, and Edwards--would be officers on my Dream Team board.

Remember, I'm only having fun here. I have no idea if any of these people would consider serving on a USBA "Dream Team," even if such a thing existed.

To be fair to all the organizations that make bowling great, I must make sure the board represents all facets of bowling. With that in mind, the other members of my Dream Team are proprietors Barb Spigner, Curt Pezzano, and Michael Ducat; male league bowlers Ed Baur, John Weber, and Kevin Dornberger; female league bowlers Linda Scott, Mary Gardner, Paula Carter, and Roseann Kuhn; male pro bowlers Mike Aulby, Dave Husted, and Parker Bohn III; female pro bowlers Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, Kim Adler, and Anne Marie Duggan; amateur bowlers Tim Mack and Diandra Hyman; manufacturers Bill Chrisman and Mike Albritton; writers Lydia Rypcinski and Lyle Zikes; the PBA's Chris Peters and Beth Marshall; the PWBA's: John Falzone; junior representative Jim Zebehazy; high school representative John Sommer Jr.; lane maintenance man Lenny "Phantom" Nicholson; instructor Susie Minshew; collegian Gordon Vadakin; Megabucks' Brad Edelman; and Paulette Watson and Diane Norwood (International Events).

It's important that every organization be represented because everyone is in this business for the good of the game. Everyone needs to be aware ofthe USBA's goals and be pulling together for the common good of bowling.

You have to think outside the box of tradition. You have to try to find a bunch of talented young people with fresh minds and fresh ideas.

Take Rypcinski. She is a gifted bowling writer and also has displayed exceptional talent with her publicity work for the AMF World Cup. Everyone continually asks the media for help but seldom includes them in the bowling family.

Only a few people may have heard of Gardner, but her father was a proprietor, she was a pro bowler and a Brunswick team member, and she has a daughter who is one of the top young bowlers in the country.

I may only be whistling in the dark with my Dream Team. But sometimes from dreams and positive ideas come incredible results. Certainly homage and respect should be given to the past bowling leaders, but the industry needs a new outlook. There are so many fresh personalities out there who could lead the march toward that new outlook, and many of them are not part of the "in crowd."

Bowling's survival is at stake. And bowling's survival is too important an issue to leave up to an ad-hoc committee or the convention delegates who decide which people will hold office. Somehow, every bowler in the country should get a vote.

Without a Dream Team--or something quite like it--to lead the way, I'm afraid bowling will lose any opportunity it has to forge ahead and find a permanent place of respect and influence within the sporting community.

I felt like I had died and gone to heaven when I found out that the annual ABC Hall of Fame Board Meeting was going to be held August 16 to 17 at the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame in St. Louis.

The last time I visited the bowling shrine was about seven years ago, during one of the very successful "Salute" ceremonies. The Hall of Fame has done a beautiful job of capturing bowling's history with four hall of fame areas, a historical arcade, four bowling lanes (two old, two,new) where you can bowl, and an interesting film.

The bowling museum, which opened to the public in 1984, appears to be attracting more interest because of its association with the St. Louis Cardinals, with whom it shares building space.

But the purpose of my trip was to review possible ABC Hall of Fame candidates, not to stroll slowly through yesterdays. Meetings that lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. resulted in the elections of two outstanding selections--the late Lowell Jackson, a superb bowler in the 1930s and '40s, and Nick Mormando, a man who donated much of his life to promoting the sport of bowling.