61st Shammy Burt heads play-for-cash tournaments

11/9/2005
BY ADAM THOMPSON
BLADE SPORTS WRITER

The bowling scene around Toledo may get a little more interesting with large cash tournaments in the midst of starting a long haul of competition.

The Toledo Sports Center, Miracle Lanes and Bolero Bowling Centers will begin the Shammy Burt, Nine is Fine and Forty Frame Game tournaments in the next few weeks.

At the Toledo Sports Center, teams from all over the Midwest will participate in the 61st Shammy Burt.

Last year, the tournament paid out more than $295,000.

The Shammy Burt tournament has various ways to win cash, such as the jackpot prizes, where the winning teams get paid weekly.

There is also the traditional Whammy Shammy, which is a game played where the lights are turned out and the people who strike win cash.

The biggest deal about this tournament is all the different opportunities to win cash there are 16 different ways, said Andy Vasko, owner of the Toledo Sports Center. Many people gravitate to where they can win a lot of cash.

The Shammy Burt runs every Saturday until the second week in June. The first big day for the Shammy Burt is Dec. 10, when 20 local teams will gather at the Toledo Sports Center.

The Toledo Sports Center will also play host to a tournament on Sunday, Nov. 27 called Drop a Frame, Drop a Game.

The entry fee is $25 and one in seven entries wins a cash prize.

If you bowl four games, you can drop the lowest game that you bowl. Also, mulligans will be sold for $2 or five for $8, but a bowler is allowed only five mulligans the whole day.

The Drop a Frame, Drop a Game has a handicap of 80 percent of 220.

Miracle Lanes will be conducting the 27th Nine is Fine tournament, beginning on Saturday, Jan. 7, and running through the end of May.

More than 3,200 bowlers participate in this event every year from Toledo, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Cincinnati and anywhere within a 150 to 200-mile radius of the Toledo area.

The tournament runs on Saturdays and Sundays for men and women, with only nine pins to knock down for each bowler.

The greatest thing about this tournament is that if you knock down nine pins, then you have a strike, said Larry Ducat of Miracle Lanes. Women can compete with their husbands and score high because of there only being nine pins.

There are two groups, handicaps and the scratch.

The Drop a Frame, Drop a Game paid out more than $50,000 last year, with several ways to win cash.

It has the individual jackpots and a mystery game, where numbers are pulled between 100 and 300 and if a bowler has that score, he walks away with some money.

Bolero Bowling Center will put on the 18th Forty Frame Game, beginning Jan. 7 and running through June 11.

The Forty Frame Game has a unique format one game lasts for 40 frames with different frames offering prize money, bonuses or pitfalls. No one has reached the perfect game of 1,305.

The Forty Frame Game paid over $500,000 in prize money last year when 15,000 bowlers participated.

Bowlers get money on the spot for strikes, but can get mulligans if they throw a bad ball.

The tournament was created by local bowlers Jim Walter, Bruce Davis and Ty Szumigala.

Walter has seen bowlers from every state, but would like to have a lot of local bowlers participate.

We have thousands of bowlers come out, but it is difficult to get local bowlers involved, Walter said. We d like to get interest from local bowlers. It s a different tournament than the others, something different to look forward to each frame.

Contact Adam Thompson at:athompson@theblade.com or 419-724-6110.