Head of Red Rock Bowling Center most at home in alley

Dennis Mathews doesn’t mind kids running around his arcade, creating havoc in the Red Rock Bowling Center.

After all, he sees a lot of himself in them.

Mathews recently oversaw the installation of new scoring machines at the 72-lane center, which is one of Red Rock’s premiere nongaming profit centers for Station Casinos.

“My parents were casual bowlers,” Mathews said under the cosmic bowling lighting scheme that is a Red Rock staple on Fridays and Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. “They were officers in several leagues in Southern California, and I pretty much grew up in bowling centers.”

Mathews began bowling when he was 8 and learned how to keep score for leagues before the process became automated, earning enough money to buy his first car when he was growing up in West Covina, California, in the 1980s.

Managing a bowling center in Orange County, Mathews brought groups to Las Vegas for bowling trips, telling his friends that one day he’d be running a Southern Nevada center.

“I would stay over in Henderson at the time and my friends would go to Sunset Station all the time. I would say, ‘Someday, they’re going to put a bowling center here and I’m going to run it.’”

And Station did.

“I applied and was pretty proud to have that position when they opened the bowling center there,” he said. “I got to oversee the late stages of construction when they opened that one.”

That was about 14 years ago.

“Then, when they decided to add bowling here at Red Rock, I was a natural fit because I had just done it. So, I was in the early planning stages of this one, oversaw the construction and have been here ever since,” around 12 years.

Mathews paid close attention to bowling center trends and watched as different demographic groups filled the center at different times of the day. When it came time to replace the scorekeeping monitors, Mathews developed attractions that kept old-guard league players happy while providing attractions that dazzled new bowlers and players who paid attention to graphic displays.

The new Brunswick Sync Scoring System allows guests to play games like Horse and Angry Birds video games using bowling pins. With the new scoring system, there are more options to keep guests engaged and utilize the lanes in different ways.

“There’s automatic scoring, but there are all forms of interactive games for children and casual groups,” he said. “You can come in and track your ball speed, you can keep your score, you can set up certain pins if you want to practice and get better at shooting 10-pins and 5-pins. It’s all interactive now so you can keep your scores online and as soon as you finish a game, you can post it to social media from the scoring machine.”

One silly app, Pin Pix, takes a bowler’s picture and decorates the image with an animated mustache, a pair of glasses or a hat and once a game is completed it will deliver the wacky portrait on social media.

While competitive bowling is somewhat stagnant, Mathews says league bowlers appreciate the updated scoring technology and a wide variety of groups populate the center on weekends.

“One of the exciting things about being in the bowling center is the relationships you build with the community,” Mathews said. “Just about anything you can do as a social activity is done here, and it’s rain or shine and it’s not age specific. It’s an entertainment venue for all ages.”

For that reason, Mathews enjoys the time he spends there.

“To me, running a bowling center isn’t work,” he said. “When you work somewhere for 14 years, it’s a home away from home and it’s not really a job anymore. We’re serving the family and just having a good time all around.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.