Wherefore art thou women's bowling?

Top Women's Leagues
I was asked for help promoting a competitive women's league in Huntsville, the Pepsi Ladies Peterson Point. It is a 3 bowler 10 team league. In today's declining interest in league bowling, this seems to be a rather good size league. I honestly did not know what to do to help. Should I have posted a "Join our League" blurb on the front page of AlabamaBowling.Com? Would it have helped? Of all the fancy web statistical packages, I don't think I am smart enough to discern the gender of my visitors. One reason for starting this blog was to help promote different causes such as league promotion as tournaments are regularly posted on the web site. Are there other competitive women's leagues, scratch or handicap, in the state? Are they on the decline? There are at least 10 women in the state who carry a league average of 210 or more. Do they regularly compete against each other in the same leagues? Do other women try to measure their skills and want to better their games by competing against these top bowlers?

Social or Competition
It is obvious that mixed leagues are the backbone of league bowling. Most of these are purely a night out with the spouse to join friends for a good time. There is nothing wrong with that. Women joined the ABC for the 'open' competition to join their husbands and boyfriends when going to the city, state, or other sanctioned tournaments. Some women wanted to do more than watch; they wanted to participate. It is my opinion that many women's associations were forced to merge because of rapidly declining membership. Once the men's associations became 'open' associations, some women joined them and did not join the women's association. Anecdotal evidence from Google searching has led me to believe that women association membership declined at a larger percentage than ABC associations. This still does not explain why women only leagues are not forming. With fewer women bowlers, I can understand fewer women-only leagues. In the big 4 associations, I would understand if only 1 or 2 competitive women-only leagues existed. In the case of open classic money leagues, most bowlers gravitate together to the league, no matter which bowling center. In the 80's bowling centers would get big sponsors to their leagues to pull these bowlers to their center. So, thank you Pepsi (or Buffalo Rock, the Huntsville distributer) for supporting women bowling.

Not the WNBA
Women's professional bowling, as an organization, is gone. Most people I know enjoyed watching it live or on TV. The WNBA has horrid television ratings but continues to thrive. The NBA is working very hard to keep it alive. Continued sponsorship like that never materialized for the LPBT or PWBA. I'm sure everyone enjoys watching the guys throw the big sweeping hook on television. Top women bowlers are just as balanced, throw more revolutions than I do, and as accurate as men. Carolyn Dorin-Ballard is not as exciting to watch as Michelle Feldman, but she is one of the top women bowlers in this country. Let me stop these comments before they are posted, I think Walter Ray is not that exciting to watch either. That does not diminish their superior skill.

So, the pool of competitive women bowlers is shrinking. To satisfy that quest for competition, these women must come together locally for leagues and tournaments, regionally and nationally for tournaments. AlabamaBowling.Com is the web home for three regional women's tournaments; DixieBelles, Women's Southeastern, and Ladies East Coast Classic. One of the best scratch tournaments in the region is the TNBA Bill Rhodman Southern Division. The women's division usually has about 70 entries.