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Friday, November 19, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Live streaming from the World Men's Championships
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USA takes bronze, Sweden gold in doubles at World Men's Championships
8/16/10
By Lucas Wiseman
USBC Communications
WATCH: Semifinals | Final | Medal ceremony
MUNICH, Germany - The Team USA pairing of Patrick Allen and Rhino Page earned an unexpected bronze medal Monday night at the 2010 World Tenpin Bowling Association World Men's Championships.
After competing on the opening of five qualifying squads, Allen and Page didn't think their qualifying score would be high enough to advance to the semifinals as one of the top four teams. Instead, they slide into the semifinals as the fourth seed.
In the semifinals, the Americans fell to the eventual gold medalists, Sweden, 449-373. The Swedes went on to win the title with a 398-379 victory over Malaysia.
"We feel fortunate that we made it into the semifinals, but as a team we don't feel like we bowled as well as we should have on this pattern," Allen said. "The bottom line is that we aren't here to win bronze medals. Great bowlers are able to take advantage of situations like this, and we didn't get it done today."
Team USA fell behind early in the semifinal against Sweden and was unable to recover as Allen shot 209 and Page had 164. Mathias Arup had 253 for Sweden, while Martin Paulsson shot 196 in the winning effort.
In the championship match, the Swedes edged past the Malaysians after Nur Aiman left a 4-6-7-10 split in the final frame. That setup Arup to mark in the final frame for the title, and he delivered a perfect strike to lock it up.
Paulsson led the Swedes in the gold-medal match with 221, while Arup shot 177. Aiman shot 192 for Malaysia, and Alex Liew had 187.
Malaysia advanced to the championship match with a 429-325 victory over Germany's Bodo Konieczny and Jens Nickel. The Germans and Americans shared the bronze medal with the semifinals losses.
The Team USA pairing of Bill O'Neill and Chris Barnes finished just outside of medal contention, taking fifth place, 11 pins out of the semifinals. Wes Malott and Tommy Jones took 17th place, missing the semifinals by 68 pins.
Attention now shifts to the trios event, which begins with two days of three-game qualifying blocks on Tuesday. Team USA's Page, Allen and Malott will team up, while O'Neill, Barnes and Jones will join forces.
BowlingDigital.com will provide live streaming of the semifinals and finals of each event and coverage can also be viewed live on BOWL.com. The trios semifinals and final are scheduled to begin on Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern.
The 2010 WTBA World Men's Championships features 356 competitors from 65 countries competing for medals in six events - five-player team, trios, doubles, singles, all-events and Masters match play.
2010 WTBA WORLD MEN'S CHAMPIONSHIPS
At Dream Bowl Palace, Munich, Germany
Monday's Results
CHAMPIONSHIP
(Winner earns gold, loser gets silver)
(1) Martin Paulsson/Mathias Arup, Sweden def. (2) Alex Liew/Nor Aiman, Malaysia, 398-379
SEMIFINALS
(Winners advance, losers tie for bronze)
(1) Martin Paulsson/Mathias Arup, Sweden def. (4) Patrick Allen/Rhino Page, United States, 449-373
(2) Alex Liew/Nor Aiman, Malaysia def. (3) Bobo Konieczny/Jens Nickel, Germany, 429-325
QUALIFYING
(Top 10, six games)
1, Martin Paulsson/Mathias Arup, Sweden, 2,621. 2, Alex Liew/Nur Aiman, Malaysia, 2,568. 3, Bodo Konieczny/Jens Nickel, Germany, 2,514. 4, Patrick Allen/Rhino Page, United States, 2,513. 5, Bill O'Neill/Chris Barnes, United States, 2,505. 6, Choi Yong-Kyu/Kim Tae-Young, Korea, 2,498. 7, Anders Lousdal/Frederick Ohrgaard, Denmark, 2,497. 8, Syafiq Ridhwa/Aaron Kong, Malaysia, 2,497. 9, Cho Young-Seon/Jang Dong-Chul, Korea, 2,493. 10, Cheuk Yin Mak/Wu Siu Hong, Hong Kong, 2,484.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Major Leaguer C.J. Wilson hosts bowling charity for children's hospitals
8/16/10
By Gianmarc Manzione
USBC Communications
ARLINGTON, Texas -
Anyone in attendance at Wilson’s second annual “Strike Out” bowling event at Splitsville Lanes in Arlington, Texas on Aug. 12 knows that in C.J. Wilson’s world, the word “charity” is as much about turn tables and good times as it is about the price of the tickets they buy to get in the door.
“I think a lot of people equate philanthropy with a stuffy, bourgeois kind of thing,” explained Wilson, a starting pitcher for the Texas Rangers with 116 strikeouts so far this season. “I love this venue and I have a really good time making it casual and fun. I want to show people that they can make a difference, too. It’s about the time and effort that they put in by coming to events like this as much as it is about any money the event raises.”
Any starting pitcher in Major League Baseball can send a check to the charity of their choice. But for Wilson, the point is not money; the point is to generate community awareness of the plight that faces children such as eight-year-old Micah Champagne.
“Micah has severe hemophilia. It’s a bleeding disorder that affects 18,000 people in the U.S.,” explains Micah’s father Robert, President of C.J. Wilson’s Children’s Charities. “He takes IVs every other day that help prevent internal bleeding or anything like that.”
The daily experience of most boys is characterized by sights and sounds that will linger in their memories for life: the shriek of a referee's whistle at a flag football game, the wads of gum they chew in little league dugouts, the crashing of pins at a Saturday morning youth league. But when C.J. Wilson met Micah Champagne in a place where childhood is anything but typical — the Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas — the two hit it off like old buddies and C.J. Wilson’s Children’s Charities was born.
Robert Champagne with his son Micah
“The Texas Rangers were at the hospital while my son was being treated for complications with hemophilia, and C.J. came over and he and my son just clicked,” Robert Champagne explains. “As a dad, that meant the world to me. I wrote C.J. a letter thanking him, and he contacted me. We started this charity shortly after that.”
The bond that Wilson formed with Micah in the hospital that day now is an event that brings Micah’s story to people from throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth community — an event that sold 300 walk-up tickets in 2009 and, this year, attracted nearly 500 attendees.
“We do this to promote awareness and community involvement, not for the money,” Robert Champagne says. “If this were about writing a big check, C.J. would write a big check. It’s more about community awareness and letting people know that they need to get involved in their community.”
If they happen to have as much fun as college kids in a frat house on a Friday night in the meantime, well, that’s how it is when C.J. Wilson takes up a cause.
“Really want to see someone do the funky chicken or some other robot moves on the dance floor. Party at Splitsville!” Wilson posted on his Twitter page from the event, where teammate Elvis Andrus, Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels and the team mascot joined in on the fun.
Robert Champagne with C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers
The combined force of Wilson’s generosity and the money he raises at local charity events helps to return some sense of normalcy to the lives of boys and girls whose childhoods have been interrupted by illness.
“We provide patient comfort items like video games, televisions, DVD players, entertainment centers, things like that,” Robert Champagne explains. “We just want to try to provide a better experience for the kids in these hospitals.”
“The response has been great,” Wilson says. “It seems with each event we throw, we get a little bit more notoriety, more media attention, more attendance.”
Be sure to check in with C.J. Wilson’s website, leftylefty.com, for information on upcoming C.J. Wilson’s Children’s Charities events.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Marshall Kent storms onto bowling scene in 2010
8/13/10
In fact, Marshall Kent had bowled that match many times before he stepped inside Woodland Bowl in Indianapolis that day. He bowled it while playing buddies for sodas back home. He bowled it in each of the six Junior Bowlers Tour events he has won this year alone. He bowls it every time he shoes up for practice while the rest of Tacoma sleeps.
By Gianmarc Manzione
USBC Communications
Marshall Kent packed his bowling balls and hit the road last month with the same destination in mind as many other youth bowlers around the country: Indianapolis, where he would bowl the 2010 USBC Junior Gold Championships as well as the North Pointe Insurance High School Open Singles tournament later that week.
By the time he packed up once again to head back home, the 17-year-old native of Yakima, Wash. had won both tournaments, signed on with an emerging college bowling program, and racked up about $75,000 in scholarships. Oh, and he had also clinched a spot on Junior Team USA for the first time.
“It’s a dream come true,” Kent says of joining Junior Team USA. “I could not even imagine that I would make the team this soon.”
If this all sounds like a pretty good deal for one week’s work to you, you’re not the only one.
“It was an incredible week,” says Jim Kent, Marshall’s Father. “Junior Gold was $10,000, then the North Pointe was $15,000, and then the next day he signed a letter of intent with Robert Morris [of Illinois], so ultimately it ended up being about a $75,000 week for him.”
But this is no evening news story of the lucky local who strikes the jackpot with a scratch-off ticket or the pull of a slot handle. This is a story of tireless work and its just reward.
It is a story in which 4 A.M. is as good a time as any to get in a few extra games of practice.
“I had to come into my center at 4 A.M. one morning — we’re open 24 hours — and there’s Marshall throwing some practice with a friend,” says Bob Hanson, one of Marshall’s long-time coaches. “I said ‘Marshall! What are you doing?’ He said they weren’t tired so they came down for some practice games. That was about four days before Junior Gold.”
It is a story of the 160-mile drives Kent takes through the Cascades from Yakima to Tacoma just to bowl six games a month in a travel league there.
Most of all, it is a story of needing all three strikes to win Junior Gold and putting 30 in the pit as if it’s just another few shots of practice back home, of leading the North Pointe the next morning on no sleep and a stomach so ill it might have kept anyone else off the lanes.
“We didn’t get back to the hotel until about midnight because we went out with a bunch of friends from Washington after he won Junior Gold,” Jim Kent recalls. “And I think at that time it finally hit Marshall what he’d done and he started vomiting and had to be at the bowling center at 8 A.M. the next morning for the North Pointe. I don’t know how he did it, but he got up and led qualifying the next day.”
One person who has some idea how he does it, though, is Junior Team USA member Chris Bardol, who also is a standout on the Robert Morris University bowling team that Marshall Kent will join in 2011.
“Chris was sitting behind the lanes when Marshall threw those three strikes in the tenth to win Junior Gold, and he turned to me and said ‘Those three shots were strikes right off his hand,’” recalls Dale Lehman, Head Coach with the Robert Morris University bowling program. “He said ‘That kid’s got ice water in his veins.’ He had amazing composure all week; whatever he needed to have, he was able to come up with it every time.”
And now, in the biggest three shots of his life and at a tournament where he did not even make the cut last year, he had come up with it again to clinch the title by a score of 269-265 over Matthew Gasn. And he had done it on the pair where he previously shot his lowest score of the day, a 150 in game 42.
“Neither of them should have been able to bowl that well on that pair,” says Marshall’s father. “Nobody had shot over a 211 on that pair all day long. There is no way these two kids should have shot a couple of 260s, especially with all those people watching in the center and on the live stream. That was the most incredible match I had ever seen in my life.”
“I had been in that situation before,” Marshall explains. “Just the confidence in knowing that I had done it before gave me all I needed to do it again.”
In fact, Marshall Kent had bowled that match many times before he stepped inside Woodland Bowl in Indianapolis that day. He bowled it while playing buddies for sodas back home. He bowled it in each of the six Junior Bowlers Tour events he has won this year alone. He bowls it every time he shoes up for practice while the rest of Tacoma sleeps.
“He practices like he’s bowling a tournament,” says Harry Mickelson, a Two-Time Team USA member and coach of Marshall’s. “He knows you can’t just flip a switch when it comes time to compete; it doesn’t work that way and he knows that. He wants to make good shots, whether he’s practicing by himself or bowling Junior Gold. I've coached high school basketball for years too, and I've coached plenty of kids that wanted to win, but only a couple that needed to win, and Marshall falls in that category. He's got a lot of fire in his belly.”
“Every time I practice I ask myself ‘What can I do to get better?’” says the boy with the fire in his belly. “‘How can I get to that elite level?’”
“He’s been bowling from the time when he had to push the ball from between his legs, from the time he was two years old,” Marshall’s father says. “We almost had to kick him off the lanes when he was growing up. He would bowl for six hours and we’d have to drag him out of the center, and sometimes it was kicking and screaming.”
But the only ones who needed to be dragged out of the center kicking and screaming at Junior Gold were the college coaches that swarmed Kent like kids at a candy stand with a frenzy of scholarship offers.
“In one way it was fairly entertaining, because I’ve never had this kind of attention before,” Marshall says. “But on the other side there is sorrow because you have to turn most of them down.”
“We went down there with a package that we gave out to all the collegiate coaches with the intent to get this decision done this summer so he didn’t have to worry about it in his senior year,” Jim Kent explains. “We had to work a little at it, but after Junior Gold all the coaches were interested in it.”
Funny how quickly the same coaches that make you “work a little at it” come around when your son shoots 715 in the final three games of Junior Gold to win it at age 17. But when Marshall Kent shows up at Robert Morris to join the bowling team in the fall of 2011, the coach that will greet him at the door will be the one who beat out most of them by several years.
“I’ve watched him for three years,” says that coach, Dale Lehman. “I’ve been talking to him and his dad for several years. I expect him to step right into our starting lineup. The day he came and worked with us, we made suggestions to him right then and he could not wait to try them and get a little better. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at, you can always get better, and he is extremely eager to do that.”
“I am so excited for college,” Kent says. “I am just really looking forward to it.”
For now, though, there is still a full year of high school ahead for Marshall Kent, who enters his senior year this fall. There are those three-hour trips through the mountains and the six games of league to bowl on the other side, the predawn practice sessions in Tacoma, and that dream he’s been working on since the day he pushed a ball down the lane at two years old.
Electronic device helps get Mark Roth back out on the lanes
8/18/10
Bill Vint
PBA Communications
“It’s like a miracle,” Denise Roth said after watching husband Mark Roth, a Professional Bowlers Association Hall of Famer and one of the greatest bowlers in history, walk unaided on the approach and throw a 12-pound bowling ball for the first time in more than 14 months.
Since Roth, 59, suffered a massive stroke in late May 2009 that left the left side of his body paralyzed, he has refused to give up the fight to regain his life. His first public appearance following his stroke was at the GEICO Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship in late March in West Babylon, N.Y., which motivated him to continue his rehabilitation. He followed that appearance with a trip to Columbus, Ohio, in April where he spent several days with his former PBA Senior Tour competitors.
Last week, with the assistance of a recently-developed device called a “WalkAide” that provides electronic stimulation to eliminate a common stroke condition called “drop foot,” the 34-time PBA Tour champion made another milestone leap forward. With the WalkAide, he was able to lift his left foot almost normally and walk “without tripping over his toes,” Denise Roth said. And with the ability to stand and walk on his own, Roth decided to test the device on a bowling lane in Fulton, N.Y., where he quickly worked his way up from a 6-pound ball to a 12-pounder, Denise said.
“Mark had use of the device for a seven-day trial and it was amazing,” Denise said. “He could walk faster and farther than any time since his stroke. He actually bowled with confidence. He was getting around 100 percent better, which helped him get some badly-needed exercise.
“He had to turn the WalkAide back in after the trial period, so now we have to wait to see what the insurance company says (about getting it back),” she added. “It’s a wonderful device. It actually took some of his hip pain away, too.”
Sunday, November 14, 2010
O'Neill golden in singles at World Men's Championships
8/14/10
By Lucas Wiseman
USBC Communications
WATCH:
Semifinals | Finals | Medal ceremonyMUNICH, Germany -
In what has become one of international bowling's biggest rivalries, the United States topped Korea for the singles gold medal Saturday night at the 2010 World Tenpin Bowling Association World Men's Championships.
Team USA's Bill O'Neill defeated Korea's Choi Bok-Eum, 244-202, in the one-game gold-medal match at Dream Bowl Palace. England's Dominic Barrett and Team USA's Chris Barnes shared the bronze medal after falling in the semifinals.
It was the latest clash between the two world bowling powers, which have met for medals in men's events, women's events and youth events around the world over the past few years. And it was Team USA coming out on top in the opening event of this edition of the World Men's Championships.
"Hearing the national anthem play in another country after winning the gold medal is something you can't describe," said O'Neill, who won two titles on the Lumber Liquidators Professional Bowlers Association Tour last season. "It's hard to get too hyped up about it, though, because it was in singles. It would be an even more emotional experience with my other teammates up there with me. Hopefully, we get a chance to do that this week."
In the title match, O'Neill started strong with three consecutive strikes, a spare and five more strikes. By the time six frames were in the books, O'Neill had amassed a 44-pin lead and rolled to the title.
O'Neill entered the semifinals as the fourth seed after six games of qualifying earlier Saturday. He defeated top seed Barrett, 187-170, in the semifinals to advance to the gold-medal match.
"This feels pretty good because I think I was pretty fortunate to even be in the top four," said O'Neill, who advanced to the semifinals by a slim four-pin margin over Sayed Ibrahim Al Hashemi of the United Arab Emirates. "I had a tough semifinals match, and in the championship match I moved to the right 10 boards, played straighter and it worked out."
In the other semifinal, Barnes, the third seed, lost to No. 2 Choi, 217-191, after a devastating split in the eighth frame. Barnes, who said he never quite managed to figure out the right lane, left the 3-6-7-10 split in the eighth frame on that lane and never recovered against Choi.
"He had the better ball reaction by a lot and sometimes that just happens," said Barnes, who shot the tournament's second 300 game in qualifying. "I expected this pattern to be my weakest, so to come out here and get a medal is pretty satisfying."
The attention now shifts to the doubles event, which begins with the first three of five qualifying squads on Sunday.
Team USA left-handers Patrick Allen and Rhino Page, the defending world doubles champions, will team up on the opening squad. Barnes and O'Neill pair up for Sunday's final squad, while Tommy Jones and Wes Malott will compete together on the second squad Monday.
BowlingDigital.com will provide live streaming of the semifinals and finals of each event and coverage can also be viewed live on BOWL.com. The doubles semifinals and final are scheduled to begin on Monday at Noon Eastern.
The 2010 WTBA World Men's Championships features 356 competitors from 65 countries competing for medals in six events - five-player team, trios, doubles, singles, all-events and Masters match play.
2010 WTBA WORLD MEN'S CHAMPIONSHIPS
At Dream Bowl Palace, Munich, Germany
Saturday's Results
CHAMPIONSHIP
(Winner earns gold, loser gets silver)
(4) Bill O'Neill, United States def. (2) Choi Bok-Eum, Korea, 244-202
SEMIFINALS
(Winners advance, losers tie for bronze)
(4) Bill O'Neill, United States def. (1) Dominic Barrett, England, 187-170
(2) Choi Bok-Eum, Korea def. (3) Chris Barnes, United States, 217-191
QUALIFYING
(Top 10, six games)
1, Dominic Barrett, England, 1,395. 2, Choi Bok-Eum, Korea, 1,392. 3, Chris Barnes, United States, 1,375. 4, Bill O'Neill, United States, 1,372. 5, Sayed Ibrahim Al Hashemi, United Arab Emirates, 1,368. 6, Pasi Uotila, Finland, 1,357. 7, Ernesto Franco, Mexico, 1,353. 8, Jesper Agerbo, Denmark, 1,349. 9, Nobuhito Fujii, Japan, 1,347. 10, Jang Dong-Chul, Korea, 1,346.
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