Accidentally, the coolest league I've ever bowled on.

[swingset]

I wanted to bowl a summer league, but couldn't get a team together for a co-ed league, and the scratch leagues are on days I can't bowl. I signed up for a Sunday night league, that was supposed to be a league with 4-people to a team. Figured I'd fill a spot and bowl with who knows who...beats not bowling all summer.

So I show up to the first night and it turns out very few people who signed up showed...so we were left with 16 people total in the league. We pondered what to do for a few minutes, and the house said we had 8 dressed lanes allocated so we could do whatever we wanted. So, we decided to bowl singles - each person being their own team, 3-game format. Just a fun league, there are some new bowlers so it's a 90%/220 handicap and all that....but since we won't build a decent prize fund we decided to do something kind of interesting. We pay just the lineage of $9 a week each, and then all put an additional $4 into two 8-person brackets that get drawn randomly each week. The winners of the brackets (taking scratch scores) have a one-game rolloff, winner takes $32, 2nd place takes $10. The person with the highest series handicap wins the rest ($22)....so even the new bowlers have a shot to take some cash home each week and it makes the regular league one friendly competition and the brackets another one. No prizes at the end, but lots more fun week to week.

What looked like it might be a sad little league now has me looking forward to it each week. If anyone runs into this in forming a league, it's a fun alternative to 4 teams playing each other over and over again.

[billf]

I like the bracket set up. It's a good way to get newer bowlers into brackets and everyone has a chance to win some money.

[JPbowl]

Thats a good idea, I had the misfortune of bowling on a summer league where ambition was lacking.
I had made up a fair prize fun where first place team would just about get their money back for season.
Someone else half-azzed a prize fund where everyone got the same amount ... ie 1,2,3 got 125 4,5,6 - 100 .... etc
Came down to a tie vote 3 times before mediocrity won.

Ended up taking 1st in a house i really didn't like to begin with and still lost almost $200.
I'm not sure what classified that as a "prize fund"

[Jaescrub]

That sounds fun it would out a fire under the new bowlers butts to get better as they don't have a team to fall back on. I would love to do a bakers league night once or twice a month for a year winning team gets whatever I just think that would be a fun .