A ten pin away!

[StormGirl]

Ouch. That's a terrible story. Sorry about that. How did you go about getting sponsored? Was it just a matter of catching the eye of the sponsors at smaller tournaments?

[HunterRunsIt]

Well I can tell you it is not cheap to bowl on the regional level, on the Southern PBA Regional Tour most
if not all of the tournaments will cost you $220.00 if you are a member and $285.00 if you're not plus the
cost of your PBA membership which is a $99 initiation fee plus $300 annually plus the transportation cost
to and from the tournaments plus hotel/food etc., etc.,. If a person is serious about joining the PBA and
intends to bowl quite a few tournaments then you will need to line up some sponsors or have some mighty
deep pockets of your own.

I was in the process of getting ready to join the Southern Regional PBA Tour back in 1999 until I injured
my back at work. I already had my membership form filled out and already had several sponsors lined up
and was good to go until my back injury happened and that wound that up. I didn't get back to bowling
until this season so I was out of bowling for 12 years and man is it ever hard to get back in the swing of
it.

That's rough! Maybe you can get back to your prime. But yeah that's a real stroke of bad like.

[got_a_300]

There are several way to get sponsors
1. you can sell shares in yourself
2. you can find sponsors at large or small tournaments
3. or get lucky like I did and have some local sponsors
4. sponsor yourself

I was lucky as I had the owners of our local center and some of their well off friends that was going
to sponsor me but oh well.................

I realize it is going to take some time to ever get back close to where I once was in bowling if I can ever
even achieve that goal again. As with age comes other problems such as knee problems plus I still have a
back problem but not quite as bad as it once was though thank goodness.