Hilander closure puts leagues in a quandary
Sunday, November 23, 2008 6:00 AM PST
By Rick McCorkle
Printable version
E-mail this articleBowlers in the Dinner Hour League that had competed for years on Wednesday nights at Hilander Bowl were faced with a tough decision.
They had to decide whether to move their league across the river to Triangle Bowl after the Hilander was closed earlier this month, or disband and forget about competing together for another season.
“We closed out the league as a five-man team format and re-formed as a trios league at Triangle,” longtime Dinner Hour league secretary Harold Conradi said. “We still bowl on Wednesday evenings, but instead of starting at 6:30 we’re now at 8:45 and finish up around 10:20.”
Several hundred other bowlers in 10 other Hilander Bowl leagues recently faced the same problem when the bowling center was closed after the building’s owner, Riverway Plaza, evicted the business on Nov. 10.
The Hilander closure hasn’t put a hold on tournaments for at least the next two years. The Washington State USBC Youth Championships slated for April and May of 2009 will go on as scheduled at Triangle, and the state USBC Women’s Tournament will be contested in 2010, also at Triangle.
“We’re going ahead with both tournaments, but we’ll probably move the Adult-Junior portion of the junior tournament to the annual meeting,” Washington USBC association manager Lowell Lovgren said. “The junior tournament format will change with the team event on Saturdays, and the singles and doubles on Sundays.”
Lovgren said that while both the youth and women’s state championships are normally held in one bowling center and is rotated around the state each year, the Washington USBC Open championships (formerly known as the men’s state tournament) uses two bowling centers.
“We’re looking at the possibility of altering the tournament so it can be held in one center,” Lovgren said. “There’s a lot of bowling centers closing across the state, so the state board is going to be taking a look at this.”
Longview-Kelso has hosted the open tournament regularly, including most recently in April and May.
“The open tournament brings quite a bit of money into the local economy,” Lovgren said. “There’s normally two, three thousand bowlers competing, so there’s a lot of revenue that could be potentially lost.”
With the number of bowling centers closing across the state, lane proprietors including Triangle Bowl co-owner Beau Little believe the state board needs to alter the open tournament format so it can fit in one center.
“The only areas in the state with multiple centers capable or willing to hold the open tournament are Tacoma, Spokane and the Anacortes area,” he said. “The Vancouver centers don’t want anything to do with the tournament because it’s held in March and April, and it hurts their open play.”
Little, along with bowling proprietors across the state, are prepared to make a proposal to the state board.
“We want them to change the tournament format so it fits in one center, and we want them to change the tournament dates so it’s held in May, June and July,” he said. “We want to have it when it’s down time for us and other centers in the state. It would be during the time when we don’t have a lot of open play, and we don’t have a lot of leagues.”
With only one bowling center now serving the Longview-Kelso area, finding open lanes for league and casual bowlers at Triangle Bowl during prime time spots has become nearly impossible.
“We’re trying to please everyone but it’s hard,” Little said. “There are times when the casual bowler wants to come in and we don’t have open lanes, and we have league bowlers who aren’t moving over here because we don’t have the open time slot they want. They either want to bowl at 6:30 or not at all.”
Little has found prime-time space for nearly all of Hilander’s displaced league bowlers, and has 32 lanes of leagues five nights a week.
“We’re wide-open on Sundays, but no one seems to want to bowl on Sunday,” Little said. “We also had to take in the Kelso girls high school team, so now we have all three high schools holding practices and matches here in the afternoons. It’s also tough to find open lanes at 3 in the afternoon, particularly on high school league match days.”
But not all of the leagues have made the move. The St. Helens Mixed and the Friendship Four leagues have disbanded, while the Good Friends women’s league is on hold, waiting for the Hilander to reopen.
“All of the bowlers in the Friendship Four already bowl in a Monday league we have here, so they decided they didn’t want to compete in both leagues,” Little said. “Two of the teams from the St. Helens League have joined the Nighthawks league, but the other eight teams didn’t come along. That’s 40 bowlers we’ve lost in the move.”
Little estimates that 150-200 league bowlers will be lost from the shuttering of the Hilander.
“A lot of bowlers are really tired of the open-closed business,” he said. “The number of league bowlers seems to decrease every year, and it proably will again when the next season starts in August.”
The Good Friends league bowlers have opted to hold out and wait for the Hilander to reopen before resuming their season.
“We’re going to wait and see what happens,” Good Friends secretary Kay Cobb said. “Half of the league bowlers worked at the Hilander or were longtime Hilander bowlers, so they decided to put the league on hold for awhile. I wish Jim (Springer, Hilander Bowl owner) well and hope something can come of this.”
Little hopes that all bowlers will remain patient during the transition period.
“This isn’t the end of the world, and we want to do all we can to keep people bowling,” he said. “Some are diehard Hilander bowlers and are going to hold out until the bitter end. Life goes on, and we’ll try to make as many happy as we can.”
feistyone wrote on Nov 23, 2008 6:22 AM:
racingrocks wrote on Nov 23, 2008 7:52 AM:
Lucky7 wrote on Nov 23, 2008 9:15 AM:
pangborn wrote on Nov 23, 2008 10:33 AM:
Go bowl your lines somewhere else. That solves that. "
ProudKelsoMom wrote on Nov 23, 2008 1:34 PM:
Rastor wrote on Nov 23, 2008 1:43 PM:
cheney119 wrote on Nov 23, 2008 3:06 PM:
coach wrote on Nov 23, 2008 6:36 PM:
just a thought wrote on Nov 23, 2008 6:43 PM:
Lucky7 wrote on Nov 23, 2008 6:49 PM:
pangborn wrote on Nov 23, 2008 7:22 PM:
There are so many things of real importance in this community like loss of jobs, loss of homes. Any of which is more important than loss of bowling. "
1980mustang wrote on Nov 23, 2008 8:29 PM:
Lucky7 wrote on Nov 23, 2008 9:39 PM:
JD Hogg wrote on Nov 24, 2008 6:33 AM:
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