WHAT THEY DID: 

1. They mandated that for ranking teams for the playoffs, teams would be judged on five-player scores, effectively dictating that five-player teams would bowl in league matches. (see power points below)
2. They changed the playoff system into a bracket tournament at the sectional level, based on power points (dictated by above), similar to most of the other sports.

On their face, they do seem to be good ideas.  In reality, some are questioning whether the changes are best for the sport, particularly at the high school level in New Jersey.

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES.

1. Let’s start with the simplest one. For smaller schools, adding a fifth bowler on a weekly basis can be difficult.  You would think that going up one bowler would not be a problem, but for smaller schools without a huge participation in bowling, it can be.
   1. This is even more prevalent at schools of any size, in girls bowling.  Two Big North schools, Passaic and Paterson West Side, have dropped girls bowling.  Now, if a girl wants to bowl, she must be good enough to qualify for the boys’ team.   Reducing the number of girls who are bowling is bad for the sport of bowling, and bad for girls’ sports.  (Anyone see a Title 9 lawsuit coming up?)
2. No one checked with the bowling alleys about the change.   If you assumed just adding a bowler would be an easy thing for the bowling centers, well you know what they say about the word “assume”.   Unlike baseball, football, basketball, and volleyball, and other sports, the schools who bowl do not control their facilities. They use commercial lanes who do not make their money off high school bowling.The bowling centers make their profits off the nightly adult leagues that follow the high schools. Adding 20% to the number of bowlers, would add 20% to the time required for matches.  Time which the lanes do not have to give to the high schools without infringing on their night leagues.  A non-starter.

As a result, teams will now have varsity bowlers bowling with their junior varsity teams, and different lanes.  Most teams will just add one bowler in a 4-1 split, although 3-2 is permissible.  Which means that competitors bowling for the same team, during the same match, or on different playing fields. (Hard to think of another sport where that is even feasible.)

Believe it or not, that is nothing new for teams in Central and Southern New Jersey, because many of them are bowling at bowling centers that only allow three bowlers to bowl on a lane at a time.

The Bracket System.

PowerPoint Procedure

1. A team’s PowerPoints are defined as the average of every team PP-Game during the regular season.

2. A PP-Game is based on the 5 best individual scores in each game.

3. All PP-Games will be averaged (rounding to two (2) decimal places) to determine the overall PowerPoints for that team.

The atmosphere for the Saturday Tournaments at Bowler City and Lodi Lanes was electric.  Crowded houses, lanes filled with teams competing, it is a spectacle by itself.  That will now be spread out into a handful of individual matches on weekday afternoons with diminished crowds.

(A side note: Schools always talk about parental involvement, but except for a few sports, most are scheduled at times which are convenient for everyone BUT the parents who might wish to attend.)

Then there is the perception that every bowling match is the same throughout the state that the power points assume.  Without going into all the technical issues, we can just focus on two major points.

1. Not every bowling alley scores the same.  Teams bowling at higher scoring lanes will get that benefit in the tournament.
2. Strength of schedule.  When a team bowls a team it is not competitive with, bowlers tend to lose focus once the match is decided.  Now that could cause a placement problem in the power points.  It also prevents coaches from giving JV bowlers experience by bowling them in a varsity match that they feel is a mismatch.

One thing no one wants to happen, is for bowling rankings to turn into the same convoluted mess that high school football currently is.  And these are not the only issues, just the most obvious.

From the outside looking in, it does not seem that the powers-that-be at the NJSIAA took all this into consideration.