Women bowlers return to Vegas for 3-month event at South Point

It is billed as the world’s largest participatory sporting event for women — bigger than some of these girls’ youth soccer tournaments, even. When it ends in three months, it will have pumped more than $120 million of nongaming revenue into city coffers.

Which is going to require a bigger pump and larger coffers.

But what I like most about the United States Bowling Congress Women’s Championships (and USBC Mixed for men and women teams), now under way at the South Point Tournament Bowling Plaza, is that Pat Christenson gets to tell the story again about amateur bowling and showgirls and Las Vegas losing out to Billings, Montana.

It was 2001, Christensen said, and Eric Clapton had just sung “Layla” at a gig Christenson had booked for UNLV when he became president of Las Vegas Events. Cognizant of that large pump and city coffers thing, the first sporting event he went after was the USBC Open Championships for men — which Las Vegas had previously held, but then had lost to less glittering locales such as Billings and El Paso, Texas.

This would explain why Christenson and a couple of Las Vegas showgirls went to Montana and nearly froze their feathers off in an attempt to woo the USBC back.

Build a state-of-the-art bowling center with bells and whistles and a pro shop with wrist braces, and we will come (back), Christenson was told by the Big Lebowskis who run the USBC.

So Michael Gaughan built a bowling center at South Point with abundant bells and whistles and wrist braces. He built it right next to the equestrian center and some ginormous ballrooms in which other sporting events can be held.

This would explain why on Saturday afternoon, you had thousands of cheerleaders and gymnasts and rodeo sorters and penners and women’s amateur bowlers riding the same escalators and splitting off in four directions when they reached the top of the stairs.

The bowlers seemed to be the biggest deal, though the sorting and penning, if you’ve never seen it, is more wild than Bill Murray’s combover in “Kingpin.”

There will be eight of these USBC championships in the next nine years at South Point. Each is expected to attract a minimum of 35,000 bowlers and family members who will spend on average 3.5 days in Las Vegas.

This is why spending $34 million on a state-of-the-art bowling plaza will prove to be a prudent business decision for the people at South Point. They’re not going to be hurting for guests out there even if the NHL and the Raiders don’t come to town.

You should have seen the line at the Steak ‘n Shake downstairs.

The cheerleaders and gymnasts and sorters and penners have mostly gone home by now, but only the first wave of bowlers has gone home, and it was immediately replaced by another wave. There will be a tsunami of women’s bowlers coming in and out of town through July 11, when these championships end. Multiply a tsunami times 3.5 days and nights in Las Vegas, and you get a whole ‘nother definition of Bowling for Dollars.

This is the first time Las Vegas has held the USBC Women’s Championship since 1983, when they were at the historic — and now defunct — Showboat. As for how it works, bowlers compete in teams, four players to a team. They roll nine games in singles and doubles. Scores are tallied by a really astute scorekeeper. After 12 weeks, if your score is good enough, I believe they give you a nice trophy and a chunk of a purse expected to reach $2 million.

This is the 97th USBC Women’s Championship. The first was held in St. Louis in 1916. Eight teams and 40 bowlers competed for $225. I’m not sure how nice the trophies were.

They held opening ceremonies for the 96th renewal on Saturday.

It rained all day, and the South Point’s $34 million state-of-the-art bowling plaza featuring 60 lanes, two 167-foot digital displays, vendor and office space and the latest in bowling-center technology sprang a leak. It was behind the approach, however; the opening ceremony went on as scheduled as a man wearing a South Point bowling shirt mopped away with what appeared to be a bowling towel.

Four breast cancer bowling survivors — Annissa Grooms of Manchester, Ohio; Marisol Guerrero of Rosenberg, Texas; Joyce Harris of Kokomo, Indiana; Katie Pogue of Saginaw, Texas — threw first balls. Then came the traditional throwing of the Mass Ball — a member of each team in the opening wave of bowlers stepped to the line and let fire in unison. Pins flew, and there was major cacophony.

Pat Christenson told his tale about traveling to Billings with showgirls, and everybody chuckled again.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski