USBC Certification -- Your Opinion PLEASE

[Rick Ramsey]

Do you care if the event is USBC Certified?? What are your thoughts?? Thanks for the input.

[Guest]

Rick,
What a great question. In today's world of bowling I try to support all tournaments in my area that are USBC "sport shot" formats. I think the path that league bowling has been going down the past 20 years or so shows the importance that taking the "challenge" out of the sport does not increase interest over time. With that said, I bowled the BTM last year and I have no idea if it was ABC/USBC certified. Even if it was, getting a USBC award score on last years 42 ft flat shot just doesn’t do justice for the accomplishment. A couple of years ago, I had an award score at the ABC National Tournament and my ring is the same as those award scores shot at Chacko’s, in Wilkes-Barre, PA (The nations leading award score house in America, I think). I feel out of the 65,000 or so who competed and more than ½ million games thrown, the 30 some award scores thrown that year was a much greater accomplishment then an award score thrown in a league back home. If the only reason is to “sanction” the tournament so rings can be given, I say create your own awards and give something that has a reflection of the accomplishment. There may be other benefits that USBC certification would bring that I don’t know about such as, greater participation, administration issues, etc.. If this is the case, I would say then getting it certified might be a good thing. Hopefully this post will bring these other issues to light.

Thanks!

[ozsweet]

Short answer - NO!

I continue to support the USBC, but, quite frankly, as stated above, there is little value given that award scores are so routine these days.