‘A legendary place’: The PBA Tour’s best bowlers return to Wichita’s Northrock Lanes
For the first time since 2018, the PBA Tour is back in Wichita for another stop at Northrock Lanes.
Qualifying in the 2023 PBA Wichita Classic kicked off Wednesday and the field of 64 bowlers will be whittled down to the top 12 by the end of Thursday. Round-robin match play will then determine the four players to advance to Friday’s main event, the stepladder finals that begin at 6 p.m.
The field includes the top 50 point leaders, including bowlers from all over the world and superstars Anthony Simonsen and Jason Belmonte, with a $150,000 purse and the winner receiving a $25,000 check.
PBA Tour commissioner Tom Clark said the stage is set for a thrilling week in Wichita.
“Whenever you have the best bowlers in the world in a great setting with great stakes, then you know you’re going to have something special,” Clark said. “And you know you’re going to have great fans in Wichita because of the knowledge of bowling in that city and the amount of competitive bowling that happens there. It’s all a recipe for a memorable event.”
For Clark, the best part of returning to Wichita is being back in Northrock Lanes, where some of the most memorable PBA Tour events have taken place. He told The Eagle that he hopes the PBA Tour can work out an arrangement to make Wichita and Northrock Lanes a regular stop.
The most iconic tournament came exactly three decades ago at the 1993 Wichita Open, which is considered one of the best televised finals in PBA Tour history. It featured two eventual Hall of Famers in Mike Aulby and David Ozio trading strike for strike with Aulby rolling a perfect game of 300 to edge Ozio’s score of 279.
“Northrock Lanes is an absolutely iconic venue in the history of our sport,” Clark said. “I was just watching that 1993 final and that’s what solidified Northrock as a top-tier place. We’ve held our U.S. Open there, our world championships there. It’s one of those places where the building itself brings so many great memories and so many great things have happened there that it’s going to remain a legendary place forever. That’s what Northrock is for us.”
There will be a strong Wichita State presence in the event with 10 of the 64 bowlers hailing from the Shockers’ program, as former WSU standouts Chris Barnes, Jake Peters, Mitch Hupe, A.J. Chapman and Joseph Grondin will be competing.
Wichita State women’s bowling team wins marquee PBA event
Speaking of the Shockers, the Wichita State bowling program is coming off yet another impressive weekend performance at the PBA Collegiate Championships, a 12-team, invite-only field of the best college teams in the country.
WSU won the inaugural event with its women’s team knocking off Mount Mercy in front of a nationally-televised audience, while the men’s team reached the finals but settled for a runner-up finish to Indiana Tech.
“We don’t get to bowl head-to-head match play very much before nationals, so this experience was huge for us,” WSU women’s bowling coach Holly Harris said. “It’s the only chance we get to be on TV basically before the national championship finals, so getting that experience is huge because it is definitely different bowling under the lights with the silence and that many people watching. I think that’s going to help us in April when we’re hopefully bowling for a national championship.”
The Shockers backed up their No. 1 national ranking by beating the best teams in the country, behind performances from bowlers including Brooklyn Gagnon, Madison Janack, Juliana Botero and Olivia Komorowski.
Harris said it was particularly inspiring to see Janack, who rolled two strikes in the 10th frame to seal the 2021 national championship for WSU, return from a serious back injury to once again deliver in the clutch for the Shockers, picking up a spare to seal the victory for WSU this past Sunday.
This story was originally published February 23, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
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