Bowlers

It's the end of winter and Carroll County is digging out fro under a blanket of snow from the Blizzard of '93. A cold wind drops the temperature into single digits and sensible people stay indoors and hug the fireplace.Enter Colorama and a different breed of bowlers. It's 3p,18l Thursday morning, and Hampstead Bowling Center is filling up with tenpin and duckpin bowlers. Coats and parkas are being shed and boots are being replaced with bowling shoes.Colorama is a bowling game in which colored pins are added to the racks of regular pins.

OK, ladies, you've been bowling duckpins for a long time, and you'reready to join the pro bowlers. How do you get started?Kathy Williams of Bel Air can give you some tips. She's president of the Women's Baltimore Professional Duckpin Association -- that's the new name for the old Ladies Professional Duckpin league. A different name but the same high standards of duckpin bowling.Kathy carries a 133 average. (Her husband, Charlie, a Baltimore County firefighter, carries 137; Kathy's two children, Julie and Jeffrey Gruzensky, are both duckpin bowlers.

Four high school seniors won $1,000 scholarships offered by the Maryland Tenpin Bowling Council at Turner's Dual Lanes in Hagerstown last Sunday.This is the 10th year that the scholarships have been offered, and money is raised by adult bowlers during a two-week fund drive throughout Maryland in October. Turner's Dual Lanes raised the highest total, more than $1,600.Monyalo Webster of Aberdeen won the boys scratch division, rolling games of 232-222-237-192-183-201--1,267. His 237 was the high game of the finals, in which 40 bowlers competed, and his 691 three-game set was also the highest.

No one is picking winners yet, but Walter Ray Williams knows he'll still be in town Saturday for the finals of the $135,000 Fair Lanes Open at Fair Lanes Woodlawn.Williams, who won here in 1986 and always seems to bowl well in this Professional Bowlers Association tournament, assured himself a spot in the King of the Hill challenge after winning the Flagship City Open in Erie, Pa., on Saturday, and then toppling Ron Williams in the King of the Hill match.At 8 a.m. today, 111 bowlers, including 75 full-time touring pros, began rolling in qualifying play for 61 spots to join the 99 exempt players in the tournament field.

In the finals of yesterday's Forest Hill Lanes Open, Brian Ziesig found himself bowling against the same man he played his first pro-am tournament with - Parker Bohn III. Ziesig dealt Bohn his only loss of the tournament in Harford County, 248 to 200, to win his second Professional Bowlers Association East Region title of the season, his sixth career regional win. After throwing a "bad shot" in the first frame, the 14th-seeded Ziesig, of Levittown, N.Y.,...

From bowlers imbibing after hours to an overworked store owner drinking on the job, a variety of liquor law violations brought the same penalty to each of four Howard County businesses -- a $100 fine.At the Eleventh Frame Lounge at a bowling alley in the 8400 block of Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City, bowlers were drinking after the 2 a.m. closing May 22, the county Alcoholic Beverage Hearing Board found last week. Licensee Jon Rendleman said the lounge was closed, but some bowlers hid their drinks and escaped detection by the business.

It started with a simple paid advertisement in the Anne Arundel County Sun: MS bowlers seek help.The ad asked for volunteers, drivers, scorekeepers, ball returners, pushers, folks who can devote a little bit of their time to bowlers who need a little help now and then.A lot is behind that simple advertisement.Let's start with multiple sclerosis. MS is a condition marked by hardened tissue in the brain or spinal cord, associated with paralysis and jerking muscle tremor.That description fits all the members of the Hopeful Wheelers bowling league that meets from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Friday at Severna Park Lanes.

Bryan Jelcic has long wanted to become a part of the Professional Bowlers Association tour. The 28-year-old Glen Burnie resident began bowling at age 7 and continues trying to work his way up the sport's ladder. Pro bowlers make their money and earn a living through a variety of tournaments around the country. But there are also several local and regional competitions in various states, including Maryland. Jelcic competes in those events regularly, especially the Free State Classic Tenpin Tour, which includes many Anne Arundel County tournaments.

More than 400 of the best scratch tenpin bowlers in the Mid-Atlantic area gathered at Country Club Lanes in Baltimore last weekend."We had 76 teams from 17 states," said Curt Pezzano, manager. "We had to turn away 30 teams."The scratch bowlers were in Baltimore for the World Team Bowling Challenge with the winning team to compete in the finals at Reno, Nev., at the end of the month."Randy Ruckman's Bowlers Alley Pro Shop team did great. It's fantastic that a local team came in third in this kind of competition," Pezzano continued.

Yes, it's time to start thinking of the fall/winter bowling season -- it's right around the corner.So let me update you on a few changes at the local lanes that you'll want to be aware of come the new season.Bob Marshall Jr., manager of Harford Lanes in Aberdeen, says he has three units of oil in place for the first 24 feet of the lanes. "The returning bowlers won't see much difference from last year in the lane conditions. The condition will be pretty much as it was last year."Fall leagues at Harford Lanes will be starting the last week of August and the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend.