It’s Official…The Case For Bowling As A Competitive Sport

As it turns out, former OHSAA commissioner Dan Ross and Executive Director Jerry Snodgrass were right.  There is a grass roots interest and support for bowling as an alternative competitive opportunity that traditionalists would never suspect.

If you’ve questioned why bowling suddenly has center stage attention on Press Pros this week, let me explain.

One, it’s raining, so enthusiasm for two-a-days and football scrimmage is a bit dampened.

Two, volleyball scrimmages really don’t tell you that much, at least according to one area coach we talked with recently.

“Everyone gets a turn.”

And three, with the PBA professionals competing in Minster (last week), Delphos (presently), and in Coldwater this weekend, there is no one better to talk with as to their personal competitive journey as both athlete, and professional.  More about that in a moment.

But since our inclusion of bowling on the Press Pros site five years ago, the numbers regarding people who read it, and proportional interest in the state tournament outcomes compared to football and basketball cannot be overlooked.  Bowling DOES matter, despite not being played on Friday night and without traditions like marching bands and pep rallies.

“You cannot overlook that St. Henry High School has had a great competitive year in 2025-’26,”  said OHSAA director of communications Tim Stried during the girls basketball trophy presentation in March.  “Three titles…football, bowling, and not now basketball.”

That’s paraphrasing Tim’s words, but you get the gist of it.  Someone in Columbus and St. Henry has respect for bowling as a competitive championship experience, the same as the long-standing traditions of championships in football and girls basketball.  Bowling, to those who play, suddenly matters.

And as we checked out the metrics of who followed last weekend’s PBA competition in Minster, we were surprised to see that across the state people were reading – in Cincinnati, in Columbus, in Cleveland, in Toledo, and in smaller percentages, of course, in rural counties where a 15-pound ball weighs just as much as it does in Franklin and Cuyahoga.

But more, the words of Minster’s Kremer Roofing Classic champion EJ Tackett resonate with why people are paying attention to bowling…why it’s gaining favor and popularism with athletes to small to play football and basketball…and why it’s likely to continue to grow in popularity in the manner or girls volleyball and women’s basketball.

“I didn’t have much choice but to bowl or play golf,”  said Tackett during a converation I had with him at Community Lanes on Sunday.

“You know, I was about 5’6″ tall and I might have weighed 125 pounds, I don’t know, exactly.  I just know that I wasn’t big enough to play football.  So I started bowling, found that I liked it, worked hard at it, and I turn 34 years old this week.  So it’s taken me this long to get where I am.”

Fellow competitor Ethan Fiore, from Tampa, Florida, has a similar story to that of Tackett’s.

“I was the youngest of three kids in our family,”  said Fiore.  “I had two older sisters who beat up on me pretty good (laughing), and my family all works 9-to-5 jobs.  And they work hard.  I saw that and wanted something different for myself.  So I got good at bowling and pretty soon no one wanted to bowl against me because I would take their money.  I turned pro at 17, started competing in regional tournaments on the PBA Tour, and started winning some tournaments.  Bowling works for me.”

Again, paraphrasing, but there’s a pride in the voice of Tacket and Fiore that’s no different than that you hear when you sit down and talk with Craig Stammen (baseball), or Julian Sayin (Ohio State football), or even  Cameron Elwer (Delphos St. John basketball), who’s entering his freshman year of college basketball at Division I Furman University.  The competitive journey has been the same for all of them, just in different sports.

Craig Stammen is 6’4″ and weighs 230 pounds.

Julian Sayin is 6’1″ and weighs 215 pounds.

Cameron Elwer is listed at 6’2″ and 195 pounds.

EJ Tackett, the world’s #1-ranked bowler as an adult now, is still only 5′ 7″ and maybe 150 pounds, and this past June won Player of The Year in the PBA for the fourth consecutive year.  His career earnings are nearing the $6 million dollar mark.

It’s the impetus for why Coldwater sophomore Andrew Myers averaged 214 last year in regular season competition, and finished individual runner-up in the state with a 268 score on his way to a 696 series (232 average) at the state tournament in February.  And ironically, Myers might be the starting placekicker for the football team this fall, as well.  Not all bowlers have that kind of athletic versatility, but many do.

The point is, anyone can bowl, as Ethan Fiore pointed out, why saying, “I didn’t want to be a 9-to-5er.  Bowling was my opportunity.”

And you see that same competitive instinct in the high school bowlers that we’ve covered for five years now on Saturday mornings, many of whom, like Coldwater’s Jasmine Schulze, have used its competitive opportunities to pursue her own life and career goals.  Schulze is currently a senior member of the Wright State women’s bowling team, and hopes to enter Medical School following graduation.

But it has to start somewhere, and the St. Henry boys, Ethan Fiore, EJ Tackett, Jasmine Schulze and Andrew Myers are proving that it can be in the local bowling establishment in your neighborhood.

They’re proving that no longer can you question them as an athlete because they don’t fit the same championship image you have for football and basketball.

They’re proving that competitive skills come in different packages, and more than one, sometimes…like place-kicking.

And according to the metrics that proved that 174,000 people tuned in to read about Ethan Fiore and EJ Tackett in Minster last weekend…it proves that bowling does matter to a growing constituency.

It proves that the sky really is the limit…for Jasmine Schulze, Andrew Myers, and the St. Henry bowling team.