June 12-14, 2015
Radisson Ontario Airport
CONGRATULATIONS
Debbie Ayers
Hall of Fame Superior Performance
Donna Morales
Hall of Fame Meritorious Service
Carlos Alestra
Coach of the Year
Scott Poddig
Proprietor of the Year
Mia Singletary & Wesley Low, Jr
Youth State $500 Scholarship Winner
James Knapp
$500 Best Bowlers come from California Scholarship
2015 CUSBC State Convention Recap
By: Bette Addington, Golden Empire USBC & California Bowling Writers
Idea Share Workshop with USBC’s Mike Larsen & CUSBC President Rosie Parker
Concerns and questions were shared by State Delegates attending this workshop that included:
- USBC Women’s Nationals. USBC awards for this event are cut down so much. Now women must bowl a 240 game or better for a pin award?
- Building Youth program idea. The Monterey USBC is trying to run their youth bowling like youth baseball where the participants pay a fee at the start of the season for a season packet. Then the participating center will issue these youth bowlers with a VIP status which gives them extras like free practice games throughout the week. An 8-10 week session would cost $100-$150 for the package. Include coaching programs.
- Youth & Adult Coaching. Put on a coaching clinic for your association. Cost would be $20 per person with a limit of 50 people in this clinic for maximum. Known coach is Mike Jasnau who charges $100 per hour and holds clinics in Reno. He does one-on-one coaching. Also on bowl.com, USA Bowling Clinics run from July through October with coaching conference.
- Bowling Book Averages. I posed the question that how can USBC accept a book average if it is from one date in one association and a totally different date from another? USBC understands that the date submissions are not the same throughout the US. Some still do April 15th, others are going with May 31st or the end of winter season. Others voiced similar concerns as I have that this needs to be standardized in some way.
- USBC Rule Books. Several delegates were upset that the number of Rule Books that will be distributed to the associations has been cut down so much. Mike said this was a way that USBC felt they could cut down some of their spending and questioned who uses these books as USBC felt it was a waste to send out that many. They will now be sending out only 5 books per center and 3 books for associations. For everyone else, you have the option of looking at the Rule Book online or downloading the mobile app.
- Bowling’s bid to get into the Olympics. Mike shared that bowling is on the short list to be considered for the Olympic Games in Japan for 2020.
USBC Jamboree with Mike Larsen
(Our USBC District Rep. David Prange was absent from this CUSBC State Convention because he was attending a state convention in Nevada.)
Mike shared a power point presentation with video from USBC that was also presented at the USBC National Convention.
USBC Promise – Celebrate the past – Be mindful of the present – and ensure bowling’s future
Main concern is getting and keeping sanctioned bowlers.
Promote what the future of our sport is.
Power that bowling has is the people (membership). We need to tell our bowlers all USBC does and that we offer to make them bowlers.
Talk to people about our sport outside a bowling center – i.e., the local shopping mall.
Promote our associations through images—pictures, create images and share these on Facebook and websites that best embody your association.
It costs you just 40 cents to have your image on bowl.com each year, isn’t that worth it?
Why join USBC?
–Rules & Bonding Department value
–Lane certification
–1895 was when organization started/120 years of bowling
–BVL (started in 1942), and was started right here in CA where women bowlers bought a plane to bring their serviceman husbands home by collecting dimes. They raised enough to buy “The Nightingale” plane, then they raised enough to buy another one naming it “The Nightingale II.”
–Halls of Fame
–Celebrating achievements and services
–Tournaments (10,000 tournaments certified annually). 1946 was when CA started holding state tournaments.
–Junior Gold members up 75% since 2005
–64,000 students received scholarships through SMART last year
–250 colleges have bowling teams
–300,000 users per month on bowl.com
Promotion. Get your local TV stations to give you local bowling coverage. Get with local TV sportscasters and see if they could use a “feel good” story.
Younger generation. Average person on social media so you need to use that outlet to get to them. Their average attention span is .07 seconds!
Expectations have changed. For your association’s web page, you need to be updating it regularly or those who use it and see no changes will lose interest.
The bowl.com app has over 3,000 downloads since it was recently launched. Please share this with your league secretaries when you have your Secretary Workshop. 60% of people in our country have a Smartphone. The bowl.com app offers the following:
Your stats, find a member, membership cards, bowl TV, USBC rule book, and latest bowling news.
Mike then shared a video from a comedian that was a guest speaker at the USBC National Convention that shared jokes but also brought across the meaning of how the sport of bowling is part of all of our lives through family as the one thing that he kept from his Dad after he lost his Dad was his bowling shirt because he knew how much that shirt meant to him.
This year was also the 10th anniversary for USBC.
Q & A period after his presentation. Only question asked by a delegate was if Junior Gold was ever going to come back to the West Coast? Mike replied not in the next two years.
Awards Banquet – Saturday evening hosted by CUSBC
The Awards Banquet had fewer in attendance than the one last year in Sacramento. This is the second year that CUSBC has tried this event. It is put on to honor any CUSBC Hall of Fame inductees as well as any other individuals being honored by the CUSBC.
Before dinner we were able to visit with our table attendees and share association stories. After dinner, the program started with the drawing for the BVL red, white and blue bowling ball and then the raffle drawing winners were announced for the money prize drawings, about 5 winners of $45 each.
First up for this year’s honorees was Coach of the Year, Carlos Alestra from Strikes Unlimited in Rocklin. Next up was Donna Morales, one of the two 2015 Hall of Fame inductees. Morales was inducted for Meritorious Service and her resume spoke for itself. A true friend of a bowler, she has worked many years to promote the sport of bowling and help put together teams for local, state and national bowling tournaments. Morales was nominated for this honor by Mary Lynly. The other Hall of Fame inductee was Debbie Ayers, who was inducted for Superior Performance and the list of her accomplishments that were read by Mike Lucas went on and on and just last year she won the State Doubles title as well as State Team! Wow!! She was excited to share that she was just signed to be a Rep. for Global 900 and FX Apparel. Ayers was nominated by Michelle Silver.
 |
 |
 |
Three youth bowlers were awarded $500 youth scholarships from CUSBC and recognized. Wesley Low (Brunswick Vista Lanes, Palmdale) and Mia Singletary (Classic Bowl, Daly City) were not present but recognized. The 
third, James Knapp, was in attendance with his family by his side. Knapp received the new award, “$500 Best Bowlers Come from California” scholarship award. The purpose of this award is to create a bridge from youth to adult bowling and to keep the youth in the sport of bowling. Knapp was an excellent choice as he won the 2014 Diddy Watts Youth State Singles Challenge title and this was his very last youth tournament! He is from North Hollywood and is currently attending Huntington University in Indiana and has already joined their bowling team. Also for getting this award, he will get a free entry into the 2016 CUSBC Open Championships.
2015 California USBC Association Annual Meeting
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Annual Meeting was called to order at 9am by President Rosie Parker. After a Memorial, Pledge of Allegiance, the singing of our National Anthem and Roll Call, the meeting was underway. First up was approval of the 2014 minutes. We were handed an excerpted version of the 2014 minutes as we entered the room for this meeting and were told that the complete minutes, which was like 112 pages from last year, are available on the CUSBC website. The 2014 minutes were then approved. There were a total of 95 adult delegates and 29 youth delegates for a total of 124 eligible to vote.
Committee Reports seemed to draw the most interest and feedback from delegates in attendance. CUSBC Director Andre Eubanks presented the Budget and Finance which went into a very lengthy amount of time as delegate after delegate had something to share especially because of the proposal we would later be voting on to possibly increase the State dues from $1 to $2. Eubanks explained that State has had a $42,000 loss and in a position where they really want to help associations by providing some much-needed awards that USBC has stopped giving (like the 300 game and 800 series). Their intent also is to develop more for the youth and by doing that it would invest in our future. Proprietor and delegate Scott Prodig from San Gabriel was at the mike several times asking things like why can’t the delegates see the budget before Convention so we can better understand what is being spent where? This got many delegates desiring more info on the items listed in the budget and why the cost was so much. The discussion went on and on. Finally the discussion was over but not many were happy with the answers. A couple things the CUSBC Board did share was that when they hold State tournaments; they were not getting much help from the local association hosting the tournament. Another thing that came out of all this discussion was that we found out that at least seven of the associations attending this Convention presently have their own Awards program in place and do not order awards from CUSBC’s awards.
Next we went into the Championship Tournaments report. For the Open and Women, there are only four weeks left and the event was held for thirteen weeks in Oroville. Entries for both events are down this year with 265 for Women and 375 entries for Open to date. The Youth State takes place in July for two weekends had currently has 85 teams scheduled so far in Dublin & Fremont.
BVL Tournament. For 2015 they had 218 registered to bowl and only 183 bowled in Modesto this past March. For 2016, they are moving the date to May 14 and the event will be at Keystone Lanes in Norwalk. A collection for BVL was done at the break we took at this Convention and a total of $768 was collected to start the 2016 BVL fund going. There is a proposed change for the 2016 BVL to change the Men’s Classic division from 190 and up to a higher number to help even out the men’s divisions more since this top Classic division has had so many participants. Stay tuned!
Golden Empire USBC came in 6th place this year statewide for our 2014-15 BVL contributions with a total of $5,529 for our membership of 1,514 which calculates to $3.65 per member in our association!
CA State Singles. Is coming up on Oct. 17-18 at Winnetka Bowl (formerly Canoga Park Bowl). It was reported that 42% of the entries for this event are walk-ins. And, now Youth can also bowl in this event!
Diddy Watts State Youth Singles Challenge (State Scratch). Coming up July 11-12 at Valencia Lanes is qualifying event. Finals are Aug. 1-2 at AMF Visalia Lanes.
New Business-Legislative. The first Proposal (By-Laws Proposal B-1) to be voted on was for the State dues increase to be raised from $1 to $2. The delegates rejected this proposal and it was not passed.
The next Proposal (By-Laws Proposal B-2) was to eliminate the 3rd Vice President on the CUSBC Board that was to be filled by a youth member of the association 14 years or older. This proposal was not passed by the delegates so this position will remain and be filled by a youth. The third Proposal (By-Laws Proposal B-3) was to change what constituted a quorum for the CUSBC board from 12 to 10 and this proposal was passed.
Nominating/Election. All incumbents were voted in to serve on the CUSBC Board. A written vote was taken for the position of 1st Vice President where both CUSBC Directors Mike Lucas and Darvis Lee were running for this position. Mike Lucas was elected (Darvis Lee was excused and not in attendance for this Convention). New to the CUSBC Board is Pauline Armstrong of San Diego who was recently appointed as Director #9. There are still vacancies for 3rd VP and Director #7.
President Rosie Parker and Assoc. Manager Larry Peppers were elected to serve as State Delegates for the 2016 USBC National Convention which will be held in Las Vegas, NV.
Annual Meeting was adjourned at 12:44pm.