Lessons From the Drill Press: Six Months at the 2025 USBC Open Championships

Some experiences in the bowling industry are truly one of a kind. For me, spending nearly six months drilling bowling balls at the Storm booth during the 2025 USBC Open Championships in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was one of them.

Testing skills under pressure

Before arriving in Baton Rouge, I already considered myself an experienced ball driller. I understood fitting, layouts, ball dynamics, and the technical processes involved in taking a bowling ball from a box and putting it into a bowler’s hands. What I didn’t fully understand was how different those skills become when tested repeatedly, under pressure, for months at a time.

Working the Open Championships wasn’t simply about knowing how to drill a bowling ball. You had to be efficient. You had to be accurate. You had to communicate with bowlers at every level. You had to know more than the customer expected you to know. You had to be prepared for almost anything that could walk through the door. And most importantly, you had to get it right.

By the end of my time in Baton Rouge, I had learned more about the craft of being a ball driller, and about the state of the pro shop industry, than I could have anticipated when I started.

Quick and accurate

The first lesson became apparent very quickly: there was no room in that booth for a slow ball driller. Efficiency was everything.

That doesn’t mean rushing through a customer’s equipment or sacrificing quality for speed. In fact, it meant almost the exact opposite. The challenge was learning how to eliminate wasted time while maintaining the same level of precision. You couldn’t choose between speed and accuracy. You had to have both.

Every unnecessary movement mattered. Every time you had to search for a tool mattered. Every extra minute on the drill press mattered because another driller might already be waiting to use it. When the booth was busy, there was always another ball behind the ...