Sorry there was no blog entry last week, as I was attending the USBC National Convention and workshops in Kansas City, Missouri, as a Delegate for the Women’s Association. I was in the Saturday legislative meeting and election of directors and not able to complete the blog prior to leaving to fly home.

For all the scoop on what occurred you can go to bowl.com and click on the various links that they have set up regarding the various workshops, the "Clash Of Champions", the legislative action that occurred and the elections.

My take on the Convention and highlights from the events I attended are below.

This seemed to be the most unorganized of the three (3) conventions I have attended. There was not much variety in the workshops offered this year from the two (2) previous but I did attend several, one of which was a workshop on "Building An Association Website." Since we have a website I was hoping this workshop would give me ideas or recommendations on what to do to make our website better, however, I was disappointed. The speaker did not know much about the actual construction of a website and only read from a script that outlined how a website is beneficial to an association. The associate speaker was the IT man who spoke about the bytes needed, the type of operating system, the various softwares and the costs to host and run a website. Most of his information seemed to be over the heads of the attendees based on the questions they were asking. Overall, I think that our website has all the information they recommend be available to the bowler and it is organized to be easy to navigate.

The next workshop I attended was on the WinLABS program which is the software issued by USBC to be used by all State and Local Associations to process members, process awards and transmit financial information regarding members. The main focus on this workshop is the fact that with USBC relocating their headquarters to Arlington, Texas, they will be losing all but one (1) of their team and they will have to hire and train new employees. This will mean that there will be down time and lag time between processing leagues, processing awards, transmittal of information and that there will be problems that will have to be overcome. Per the speaker for this workshop it takes approximately a year to train someone on all the ins and outs of WinLABS and with losing the team of employees they currently have they are losing their knowledge base. Knowledge is acquired and perfected over time and new employees will not have a background and will not know the history of the program, the associations, the previous questions and solutions. USBC is asking our indulgence and patience in this transition.

Speaking of moving to Arlington, Texas, we, the delegates, are still trying to figure out how the USBC Board Of Directors and/or Officers decided to make this move without consulting the delegation or at least sending a survey to ALL CERTIFIED BOWLERS to get their feedback on spending the CERTIFIED BOWLERS’ money. It is probably more of those "authorizations" that the USBC Board made sure to include in their list of things that they could do without obtaining approval from the membership.

Rules was the next workshop I attended. This was more of an "informational" workshop in which they discussed the various proposals for changes to rules that will be voted on during the legislative part of the convention and which ones they recommended be rejected or accepted by the delegation. They touched on the difference between a two handed approach and a two handed delivery and what is considered a legal delivery and not a change in delivery as defined in Rule 118b. The speakers advised that all tournament sanctions will be processed on-line and that the rule book is downloadable to your desktop and it is a full search version. The decision to make the rule book a fully downloadable and search version is so that league secretaries that take their laptop to the center on league night can quickly look up answers to questions that may be brought up during league competition. The speakers then moved on to the topic of local association championship tournaments and asked the attendees to share ideas that are working for their association to increase participation in the championship tournament. Surprisingly, one of the suggestions was that you hold squads during the week and not limit your squad times to the weekends. This frees up the proprietors to continue with their "extreme" bowling or birthday parties without the "inconvenience" of tournaments that only schedule squads on the weekends. I got the impression that this part of the workshop was directed at suggesting that the local associations should cater to the wants of the proprietor and not the convenience of the bowler. Without the bowler the proprietor will have no business.

An interesting suggestion that was shared was that you come in on your regular night of league competition, however, you agree before the league session starts that your scores will be used for your local association tournament. This would mean that your league would need to either schedule a "make up session" for that week or not bowl as many weeks or that you would extend your league season an extra week to make up for this missed week. Does this give those individuals an unfair advantage or disadvantage? What type of shot is used at the association tournament? Is it the same as the league shot? Does the proprietor have the mechanic on duty to lay out the "tournament" shot? Brings up a lot more questions as you examine each possible scenario and opens the door for protests from what I can glean from these suggestions.

During the question and answer part of the workshop, some attendees questioned why this was called a "rules" workshop when they did not really discuss the rules or have questions and answers about rules type issues. The response to their inquiry was "we had a rules quiz." Do you feel that was an appropriate response? Most of the attendees did not.

The last workshop I attended was a "Mini-Summit". This was designed after the Summit that was conducted last year (on short notice so none of the Ocala delegates were able to attend) to solicit feedback from the local and state associations on what they felt could be changed, amended, or deleted from the requirements set down by USBC. We were divided up into three (3) groups and each group was given a specific question to discuss and come up with the most important response to that question. You could list several responses but the most important response was the one that was discussed. It was a time to share ideas and to make recommendations to headquarters on what we at the local and state level would like to see changed at the national level to make all of our "VOLUNTEER" time more productive and to be able to service the bowler more efficiently.

The opening session of the National Convention, which is held on Wednesday afternoon, was short and uneventful outside of the fact that nothing ran on time. The purpose of the opening session is to introduce the board of directors, the officers and to let us know what will be covered during the legislative and business sessions of the convention.

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS HAVE BEEN SCHEDULED AS FOLLOWS:

The next 6 game sweeper will be on Sunday May 18, 2008, at AMF Ocala. Entries close 30 minutes prior to squad time. Squads are at noon, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm. Sign up and join in the fun.

Summer league information is available at all the centers. Check out what is available and if you don’t see a format you want - check in to setting up such a league - there are a multitude of options and formats available there should be one for you!!

CORRECTION TO THE PHONE NUMBERS - - Attention golfers: A Memorial tournament for the benefit of Kimmy Cairns-High’s children will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2008, at the Citrus Springs Golf & Country Club. 8 a.m. shotgun start; included is golf and cart; lunch and door prizes. In addition there will be a closest to the pin and long drive contests. Cost is $55 per person. Sponsor a hole for $50. For more information please contact Joe Stewart at: 352/489-5045; fax 352/489-2067 or e-mail joestewy21@aol.com.

There is also a ball raffle (Morich) currently going on for the benefit of Kimmy’s children. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5 - see Mike Stiles to purchase your tickets.

AMF West has a new manager - Bobbi Jo Blind. Bobbi Jo started out at AMF East, was transferred to AMF Ocala and now has taken over the helm at AMF West. Steve (last name unknown) is the new assistant manager at AMF Ocala.

Since the fall leagues have all or at least the majority of them have wrapped up their season there are no high scores this week. Top 10 will resume in the fall.

That should bring us up to date for now.

Remember to post any comments or questions you have on the blog and they will be responded to as soon as possible.