When Sina Beißer was nine years old, the large sports bowling club Victoria Bamberg made a guest appearance in her hometown Öhringen to contest the 1999 women’s cup final of the German Bowling Association Classic (DKBC). Bamberg won the title, while Beißer was on rail service. She looked up at the players in awe and made up her mind: “I said to myself, I would like to play there one day, for the best bowling team in the world, and one day be world champion.” Sina Beißer is now 31 years old and she has made her dreams come true.
She has been playing for Victoria for twelve years now, and she also became world champion, in 2014 individually, in a team in 2017 – and also in 2021, in Tarnowo Podgorne, Poland. In general, Beißer has won pretty much everything there is to win in bowling. At the end of June, she and her team celebrated winning the 2020 Champions League final. If you ask Beißer what she loves about bowling, she replies: “That you always try to find the perfect throw, to make the perfect game. ” You will never quite achieve that, but the attraction lies in cracking your own personal best again and again. Further, always further.
This sentence can only be transferred to bowling as a whole with the greatest cynicism. The number of members of German bowling clubs has been falling continuously for years, and the decline is also dramatic within the Bavarian Skittles and Bowling Association (BSKV). In 2016, over 19,000 people were active in a bowling club in Bavaria, five years later there are still 15,000. The calculation is simple: the elderly quit, while the young hardly keep up. However, the corona pandemic did not particularly accelerate this development, says Nils Deichner, press spokesman for the BSKV and himself a second division sailor at the Regensburg Sport Club.
The fear that “it will get worse in the course of the year, especially in the older age groups” has not been materialized for the moment. As of mid-November, only about 100 withdrawals were actually reported (500 bowlers have terminated their membership in the BSKV, but this is offset by 400 new registrations). Nevertheless, Deichner does not want to speak of a weakening of the trend. “It may be that some players have already resigned, but the clubs will not pass it on until the notice period at the end of the year.” That is currently difficult to estimate.
The bowling athletes suffer from the image of drinking and old men sport
The fact that young people in particular are rarely drawn to bowling is largely due to the negative image as a booze and old man sport. Recognition for sporting achievements is not to be expected, says Deichner: “In my circle of friends there are still those who smile at that, they say: Well, second Bundesliga bowling, you don’t really have to be able to do much.” National player Sina Beißer can also tell a song about a lack of appreciation. “When you say you’re a world bowling champion, some people start laughing.” Bowling a competitive sport? That seems absurd to many.
Uwe Rupprecht is someone who wants to change something about that. He recently became a member of staff at the BKSV, a newly created office that is also intended to counteract the dwindling number of active members. He resents the popular beliefs about his sport. Although there are long-established pub bowlers, there is no question about it, “but that was never bowling, it has always been social bowling”.
Nevertheless, Rupprecht also has a hard time making a clear distinction. “In the long term we want to attract sport bowlers, but the way to get there is for more amateur bowlers to come out again first.” In the past few months he has therefore drawn up a directory that lists all the lanes in Bavaria for hobby bowlers, including relevant information such as rent. In the coming days it will first be available on the website of the BSKV and then on those of the districts. The hope: to spark a new enthusiasm for recreational bowling.
Because bowling centers have long since overtaken the bowling alleys, birthday or company celebrations are now taking place there. Though renting a lane for bowling is often more expensive, the facilities are more modern than many bowling rooms in which time seems to have stood still. Black light, music in the background, billiard tables and table football, “as far as the surrounding area is concerned, the bowling facilities are still something for us,” admits Rupprecht. It is all the more commendable that clubs like ARSV Katzwang in Nuremberg or SC Luhe Wildenau from Upper Palatinate recently brought their bowling alleys up to date with the latest technical and aesthetic standards.
Rupprecht doesn’t give up his sport, but time is running out
Bowling has another problem. While popular top-class sport, above all soccer, has become an all-round marketed entertainment product, bowling has disappeared into the periphery of public attention. The higher-class bowling often doesn’t even make it into the sports section of local daily newspapers, “because two pages are needed for the regional B league in football,” complains Rupprecht. Even at the Olympic Games in Tokyo there was no bowling, while young trend sports such as surfing and skateboarding were part of the program for the first time.
Uwe Rupprecht is still combative. There is still a lot that can be saved, he says. For this, the bowlers have to promote their sport more actively, especially in rural areas, where local ties are even stronger. That would mean: personally approaching people, hanging up posters and sometimes proudly wearing the training jacket of your own bowling club. Cooperation with schools is also important in order to establish bowling in physical education. However, there wasn’t much time left for all of this. “If we continue like this for ten years, we will no longer exist in 20 years.” He himself sees his task in “tickling the clubs, provoking them, and also showing opportunities”. Because: “Some have still not understood that it is five past twelve.”
Sina Beißer, on the other hand, is happy that she and her teammates are allowed to train again on the bowling alley in compliance with the applicable rules, after months of hardship with only running units. The objective for this season is clear: to defend the championship title. However, due to the corona, the competition is already on hold after a few match days, and in 2021 there will be no more bowling for points. There is no date for the restart yet. On the other hand, one thing is certain: the pandemic will not be over even then.
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