Bowling With The Fef!

The months ahead are very important for high school seniors in Wisconsin.

It’s their last chance to put their best foot forward in the classroom and on the lanes as well.

Jack Dysland of Greendale is trying to lead his Greendale Co-op team to a championship while staying in the hunt for an individual title in District One.

However, he knows that academics are of the utmost importance this winter and spring. 

Now’s the time to Drop ...

Wartburg bowling coach and PWBA competitor Alexis Runk knows a LOT of bowlers, but she says the one who practices the most of all of them is Jace Goedel of St. Francis, MN.

Goedel graduated earlier this year, but worked with Alexis and her husband Brandon to step back just a little. He ended up with a collegiate career that no other bowler in program history can match.

Now he's back in Minnesota's Twin Cities, taking aim at amateur...

“Tag your favorite podcast in the comments…” the uber powerful JoPo Grips Facebook page told its 13,000 followers in a post last month (https://www.facebook.com/jopogrips/posts/pfbid0DmMtrfcMLY3YGccXenacVkoyqWTz9BUSfi4oEFKMtY9AxLPT8PRg8C3QafSNeCfdl).

 “Let them know the JoPo Fam wants to hear us!” 

I couldn’t argue with that. After all, I wanted to hear them…Michigan’s Jerry Penxa and Jerry Penxa the second…known to some as Mr. JoP...

November 12 is a day bowlers in Neillsville Wisconsin will likely never forget.

It’s when Marc McDowell, the PBA champion who is now in his second season of league bowling at Neillsville’s Strike Time Lanes, brought his Eagle trophy celebration to them.

McDowell had fired 795 in Baton Rouge, LA to win the singles event at the 2025 USBC Open Championships by two pins (https://apps.bowl.com/t...

The Agent Ong Open hasn’t left the attention of bowlers everywhere, even though the event just happened in October.

It was November 2 when Carl Ong announced (https://www.facebook.com/agentongopen/posts/pfbid02ghhtS3qgTL8b2su3xhYDRGYuTTana8BW6eoLhuG7SggJEW56y7jmZLttxkrKdBFBl) his tournament is moving out of Arizona for the first time on October 15-18 2026, and into South Point in Las Vegas. 

The defending champ is Josh Kennedy of B...

The audio version of a show...about visuals. (sigh)

Don't sleep on it! Kevin Hong, who lives near Seattle, tells some GREAT stories to go along with the incredible images he captures in vintage centers all across America and beyond.

If you can't help but take a look, check out the video version of this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_taGM7WQI

Or take a look at Kevin's website and Facebook page:

Website: https://www...

She's got the social media following like a pro and the industry partners like a pro but she insists she's not trying to go pro.

Sarah Bowls is just about sharing her passion for the sport and having fun along the way.

Sarah Rutherford of Sandusky, OH is Sarah Bowls, and her viewership, much like the name many know her by, sort of came to her. Despite her relatively short journey in content creation, she has tremendous reach on her...

Alec Keplinger is chasing that first PBA Tour title.

He finished 29th on the tour in 2025, averaging a touch higher than 216.5 for 325 games.  He also had fourth place finishes in the Mike Aulby Nevada Classic and the Players Championship.

When we recorded this episode, the PBA had just announced the television schedule for the ten events with finals airing on the CW network in 2026.

Keplinger, of Coldwater, Michigan, gave his thou...

During the summer, word started spreading about changes at Bowlero Wauwatosa. They were changes that appeared to have potential impacts on this fall's Junior Hall of Fame Tournament (http://jhoft.weebly.com), which had been held there for many years.

Those changes were no match for Tournament Director Shannon Labinski or her spirit. She has been a positive force for junior bowling in the Milwaukee area for decades, and she made sur...

What is it like to bowl the Petersen Classic? It ends up a little bit different for each bowler...or a lot different. You never really know until you're experiencing it.

After his time inside the "Golden Gates," Steve Brinkman of Sussex, WI eventually stood alone as the 2025 Singles Major Champion. He fired an eight-game score of 1,681, which was 11 pins ahead of the runner-up.

Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qo7Fk...

There are some interesting parallels for the content creator and livestreamer behind ZVL Bowling when you look at his success on social media and on the lanes.

Zak Lutemer got a relatively late start in both, trying out some other sports before settling into bowling, and another niche before focusing his content on bowling.

He’s more than made up for lost time in both. He even accurately predicted that SPI would announce the releas...

Confidence in bowling is kind of a funny thing. 

It can be easy to tell exactly who has too much of it or even not enough, but not with every bowler out there.

If you follow college bowling, you may already know about Viterbo University’s Emily Newbauer. She appeared in the Intercollegiate Singles Championship in her freshman year and put up incredible numbers at the biggest events in her sophomore year.

Her scores don’t tell the e...

After decades in Madison, Marc McDowell has found a new home in Black River Falls, WI and a new bowling home at Strike Time Lanes.

McDowell won five times on the PBA Tour, including the 1992 Firestone Tournament of Champions. Yet, when he first went to Strike Time with his father, the others in the Neillsville, WI center did not recognize him. 

The anonymity didn't last long.

Several seasons later, and just shy of his 63rd birthday...

Chetek Lanes in Chetek, WI has a tournament that draws nearly 3,000 entries every bowling season, and this season, those bowlers will compete on USBC certified string pinsetters for the first time.

Chetek Lanes Proprietor John Law recently ditched his free-fall AMF pinspotters in favor of AMF Qubica Edge String Pinspotters for his six-lane center. 

He discussed the conversion, the ways that...

When Scott Olson came up to me at the Midwest Senior Classic event in April and told me I NEED to have Gene Arentz on the show, I’ll admit, I didn’t really know what to expect. 

What I found in "Geno" was one of the all-time greats from La Crosse, Wisconsin’s USBC association. 

As you’ll hear, along with his hall of fame bowling resume, recognized as such three years ago, he is a hunter, a softball player, he is full of positivity ...

An off the sheet challenge from Joey Dayer led to this episode with New York’s Frank Goebel.

He had just driven across a good chunk of the country, and had arrived in Nebraska for the Great Plains Paralyzed Veterans of America (https://pva.org/) National tournament.

He and his twin brother Rich ended up winning a doubles championship and taking fourth place in the team event.

But as we discussed in the episode Tournament Eve, somet...

This past weekend, Ryan McDaniel and his wife, PWBA Touring pro Melanie McDaniel took to the lanes at Bowlero Mount Prospect near Chicago for the PBA LBC National Championship.

They were part of a team that must have been an absolute blast to bowl on.

Ryan may be even more notorious for his grilling than he is for his bowling, but he is now a coach as well as a player on the lanes.

Nearly everyone who becomes immersed in competitive or even social bowling for a long time ends up hearing about the “Varipapa 300.”

It was even mentioned on the telecast of the 2025 PBA Tour Finals.

A strike string at the end of one game and another at the beginning of the following game that add up to twelve total strikes: thats a "Varipapa 300."

Dig deeper into the eponym, and you may discover Glenn Gerstner’s biography “Andy Va...

The Madison Area Scratch Tour (madisonareascratchtour.com) brings in bowlers from all over Wisconsin for its events. 

And those who have competed for titles in the past few decades have likely run into Jeff Richgels, the tour’s career championship leader.

But it may not be that way going forward, as Richgels mentioned when i stopped at the year end event in April. 

Jeff owns and runs 11thframe.com, which is a fantastic resource for...