The 2nd annual SCOTCH—that's short for, Second City Open Tournament Chicago—bowling tournament has expanded by about 10 percent, and participates are expected from California, New Mexico, Florida and, of course, the Chicagoland area.
The event will be held March 7-8 at Waveland Bowl, and about 140 are expected to participate, including about 70 percent of those from Chicago, and about 20 percent are female.
"We're capitalizing on the success and fun of the inaugural 2014 SCOTCH tournament to bring everyone another fantastic weekend of bowling and camaraderie," said Jason Kallen, the event's co-director. "[The event] is actually very similar to last year. We changed some technical things, such as the oil pattern, the order of events, our fundraising events, and side-pots. One interesting thing is that Waveland Bowl renovated their lanes in the past year, so bowlers will be bowling on very new lanes. Also, this year we are incorporating a social media element and are encouraging all tournament bowlers to submit their commentary and photos to #scotch2015 so we can see how much fun everyone is having."
This SCOTCH event evolved from the Chicago Pride Invitational, a gay bowling tournament that ran for 25 years.
"Having the LGBTQ bowling community gather together in Chicago each March is one of the best parts of the weekend," said Kallen, 43, who lives in Oak Park and is the president of Latitude 42 Media. "We have a couple great host bars ( Crew and Hydrate ) to ensure that the bowlers can socialize outside of the alley and have a good time. We also have a fun awards banquet planned for Sunday evening at Center on Halsted."
Kallen—who has bowled in Chicago's gay leagues for 10 years, and has a 205 game-average with a 289 high—said the 2014 event ran smoothly and, naturally, led to a lot of laughter.
"There were few complaints [in 2014] and a lot of compliments about how much fun the participants had. I can only hope that SCOTCH 2015 goes as well as last year," he said. "One of our volunteers stripped down to his underwear at the bowling alley [last year] to help raise raffle money during the weekend … now that's dedication."
There's no word yet if there will be volunteers stripping to their skivvies this year.
The event is a handicapped tournament, meaning, "anyone can cash, no matter what their average is," Kallen said. "In fact, one of the top winners in last year's tournament is a 130-average bowler."
There are 28 total trophies given out, and money distributed to even more. Categories include first, second and third place for singles, doubles, team and all events. Also in men's and women's high scratch series and high scratch game.
"We have an amazing executive board this year with my co-director Scott Marz, treasurer Tyson Hurst, and secretary Scott Allen," Kallen said. "We also have had lots of help from our extended committee members Early Quintana ( statistician ), Justin Brown ( volunteer coordinator ), Mike Gaudreau ( designer ), Sally Hodge ( social-media manager ) and Scott Weston ( webmaster ). This was a fabulous team to work with, [and] we also have about a dozen volunteers who will be helping us out to run the side pots, verify scores and handle registration throughout the weekend."
For more information about the annual event, go to www.scotchbowling.com .
