BATON ROUGE - It is not officially on the Professional Bowlers Association calendar as of Monday morning, but we have word that Baton Rouge could be the site of a PBA Regional tournament, possibly over Father’s Day weekend in June of this year.

Sources indicate that final plans are being put together and the PBA could put it on its schedule for an event in June at All Star Lanes in Baton Rouge.

There have been several national stops, including one of the early events in 1961 in Shreveport, and most notably the run of years at both the old Don Carter Harvey’s and Expressway Lanes in Gretna, but it has been a good while since any kind of PBA regional has been held in this state.

The last major professional event in Baton Rouge would have been the PWBA Queen’s event at the Raising Canes River Center in 2017.

More details as they become available.

BATON ROUGE INVITATIONAL

With the high school season just days away, teams are competing in scrimmages and practice events this week and this year the season will have a pre-event as the Baton Rouge High School Invitational, will be held on Saturday at All Star Lanes.

The event starts at 9 a.m. and it is always a fun event because it is a Baker style event in which bowlers bowl a couple frames each game. It’s not a complete determining factor in saying this team will be the best this year but it gives you a good indication of whom to look forward to watching.

Shaw is the defending D2 Class 4A and below champ. Hearing a lot about Patrick Taylor being a team that could challenge them this year. Multi-time champion Brother Martin and Rummel are some getting notice in Division I (the 5A teams).

We’ll get into full details on Baton Rouge schools next week. I have a few report on some things about a couple of surprise teams to look for and we’ll see how some of them do this weekend.

The first matches for the regular season begin on Jan. 20. It will lead us to those wonderful power rankings, some strange seedings as always and eventually playoffs beginning in Baton Rouge and Kenner for the boys on March 30 and the girls in Baton Rouge on April 1. The finals will be held for the team titles on April 8-9 at Premier Lanes and April 10 the singles champions will be crowned at All Star in Baton Rouge.

By the way, have to salute Ava Doucet of St. Joseph’s Academy who this past weekend showed she is ready for high school bowling with a career high game of 278 and her fourth 700 series of 704.

Also Sunday, Addison Legendre put pen to paper on her college bowling choice before a nice group of family and friends at Premier Lanes. She inked with the Western Illinois Leathernecks. She will be bowling her senior season for Dutchtown.

Leadoff Lady Trio

The 18th go-round for the Leadoff Lady Trio scratch event at Tangi Lanes in Hammond drew a full field full of outstanding bowlers and when the last ball was thrown Baton Rouge’s Mykel Holliman was on the winning team with Dimitri Cruz of Houston and Morgan Kramer of Dothan, Alabama.

The second-place trio was Sayanah Rayne, Robert Johnson Albrecht and Eric Arabie.

We’ll have the Invitational results and our Baton Rouge high school preview next Monday.

Until then, good luck and good bowling,

                                Kent Lowe