High School Bowling Invitational Tournaments

Many areas have started promoting high school bowling invitational tournaments that use the name "Indiana High School Bowling" and require the bowlers to be participating in the high school bowling program to be eligible. These have not been tournaments that are run by the state office or approved by the Advisory Board. The concern is that these tournaments could affect the eligibility of the students participating and then the tournament could reflect back onto the state program, even though there is no connection. The Advisory Board suggested a few different ways to help regulate these tournaments as they pop up around the state. In order to help, any conference interested in running a high school bowling invitational should notify the state office. They need to send a copy of the flyer and rules. The Advisory Board will then look over all tournament information and approve it or make suggestions for each event. The conference coordinator is responsible for any material passed out to high school students during their meet. Please make sure that the Advisory Board has approved all information distributed. The IBCA will send out a notification to sponsoring bowling centers and coordinators letting them know this requirement for all material and tournaments for high school bowling students. This is an effort to protect the Indiana High School Bowling program and the students involved in the program. Another way to help protect our YABA bowlers is to make sure any tournament that is run be sanctioned by YABA. This would help to prevent any sanctioning violations that could affect a student's eligibility in the YABA.

High School Bowling Web Sites

Along with invitational tournaments, many conferences have or are creating web sites to post scores from conference matches. Again, most of these have nothing to do with the state program. In order to protect the program, any web sites created need to be approved by the Advisory Board, have a disclaimer stating that the site is not the official site of the Indiana High School Bowling program, have no advertising, a link to the www.indianagobowl.com web site, and file a statement of intent for their web site with the IBCA office. Any sites that are already established need to be reviewed by the IBCA office and have a disclaimer added to them.