Editor’s Note: Each year, the November issue of BCM includes a section called “Karma,” featuring stories about men and women in bowling who do the right things for the right reasons. Each year during the holidays, we post those stories for all to enjoy here on bcmmag.com.
BY BOB JOHNSON
Rick Bourgeois jokes that he hopes the end isn’t near since he’s suddenly receiving prestigious awards after being in the bowling business for six decades.
Earlier this year, the long-time Malco Theatres executive, who oversees Malco’s bowling center operations, was honored with BPAA’s V.A. Wapensky Award. He follows in the footsteps of industry giants like Eddie Elias (1985), Remo Picchietti (1990), Sandy Hansell (1994), Frank Esposito (2005), John Davis (2012) and Bill Chrisman (2015).
Illinois proprietor and long-time women’s professional bowling underwriter John Sommer Jr. received the Wapensky Award in 1998 and played a roundabout role in the second major honor Bourgeois has been bestowed this year: election to the Louisiana High School Sports Hall of Fame.
Bourgeois is part of a 10-member class that will be inducted next April 20 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The class also includes a long-time sportscaster, coaches and athletes, all of whom have left indelible marks on the Pelican State’s high school sports scene.
Why Bourgeois? He lobbied the Louisiana High School Athletic Association to add bowling to its list of sports in 2002. The presentation was well received, and Bourgeois was asked to design a pilot program. That program was successful and expanded statewide the next year. In the program’s third year, the LHSAA voted to make bowling a varsity sport. Bourgeois has directed the program from its inception.
And what does John Sommer have to do with all this?
In 1999, the integer known as USA Bowling had been tasked with expanding high school bowling, with the goal of providing a bridge between traditional Saturday morning junior leagues and adult leagues. Collegiate bowling could also be a beneficiary, but the focus was on finding a way to plug the hole that so many junior bowlers fell through during their teen years.
At the time, bowling was a letter sport in five states and an intramural sport in about 20 others. Sommer was an advocate that USA Bowling sent to make presentations about the benefits of high school bowling, and he had been invited to speak before high-ranking Louisiana high school sports officials.
Days before the meeting, Sommer came down with a bad case of the flu. He could not travel, let alone speak, and had to cancel his trip to Louisiana. An official at USA Bowling called Bourgeois and asked him to fill in. With his vast knowledge of competitive bowling (he has been a bowler himself since age 10) and a few visual aids, Bourgeois impressed the officials enough that they green-lighted the start of the process.
“When I was told about the award, I was floored,” Bourgeois says. “I had the same reaction as when I was told about the Wapensky Award. I’m just a guy who loves his job; that’s why I’m still working at 76. This has been a pretty strange year.”
Bourgeois says he called only one person in the bowling industry after learning of the LHSAA honor: Sommer.
One humble guy calling another humble guy.
“I said to John, ‘If you hadn’t gotten the flu, I don’t think I would have been going down this road for the past twenty-some years.’”
And he’s quick to point out that he has had plenty of company on that road.
“This program doesn’t work without the Louisiana proprietors who support it and essentially help underwrite it,” he says. “There’s a lot of bowling involved.”
Louisiana high school bowling team members can practice twice per week before the season, and then once the season begins after the Martin Luther King Day holiday, “they can have a jamboree, two scrimmages, 12 matches and weekly practice sessions,” Bourgeois says. “And if they qualify for post-season, there’s more bowling.”
The cost to players? Just $50 for the whole season of bowling, which Bourgeois says represents a value of between $500 and $600.
“The low cost removes the barrier to participation,” he explains. “It’s affordable for everyone. That happens only because of the participation of the proprietors. And the proprietors do it because they really believe that this is the best way to develop our future business.”
Bourgeois bowled in Louisiana State University’s intramural program but says he “would have loved to be able to earn a high school letter for bowling.” Since that didn’t happen, he says he has “really enjoyed helping make that dream come true for others.”
Those others include one son, who was a senior the year that the program debuted, and now a granddaughter. Other granddaughters have told him they also intend to try out for their school’s bowling team.
“Every so often my wife and I will be in an airport, and a few graduates of the program will come over and say hello,” Bourgeois says. “They recognize me because I’ve been the only one who’s ever run the program. They’ll say how much it meant to them, how they made so many lifelong friends. I love hearing that, and it’s a great example of how bowling can be something that connects people for their entire lives.
“I think for a lot of people, the high school years are the years remembered most — good, bad or indifferent,” he adds. “If bowling can help make those years positive, we have a chance to have a bowler for life.”
A symbol of high school bowling’s enduring significance in Louisiana high schools can be found in the trophy case at Archbishop Hannan High School in Covington, about 40 miles north of New Orleans. Hannan won the very first state bowling championship just days before Hurricane Katrina ravaged the state.
Katrina destroyed both the school and the bowling center in which the state competition was held. But one of the few things that was saved from the storm was the state championship bowling trophy.
It’s a symbol not only of one school’s historic performance, but also of one man’s commitment to bowling, to kids and to community.
And because he is who he is, Rick Bourgeois wonders what all the fuss is about.
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