Sports Page marks milestone with new system, 300s tribute
CELEBRATING 30 YEARS
When you visit The Sports Page Bowl and Grill in Medford, you’ll now notice a nod to the bowling alley’s past and get a chance to experience some of the sport’s latest technology.
As Mike and Tracy Platt mark their 30th year of ownership of the business, they’ve unveiled their newest upgrade to the facility, a brand new scoring and video system and new monitors at each of the alley’s 16 lanes.
The system went online on Monday, March 15 and comes from the Australianbased Computer Score company, who also provided The Sports Page’s previous electronic scoring system which, in 1994, was one of the first major upgrades the Platts made after taking over the alley in July of 1991.
The Duo HD system features much more up-to-date graphics, which the kids will enjoy; video replays of a bowler’s release form as well as the pin action; and, once a bowler’s name, picture and email address is entered into the system, a complete data base of that bowler’s success at The Sports Page, whether you’re a league bowler or someone who just bowls once in a while.
Information can be emailed to you and is stored on a cloud-based website. League bowlers can tap into it for live updates on the lanes competition is taking place on.
“Instead of just taking your name, I can take your picture and upload your picture,” Mike Platt said. “The system we had, as good as it was, was more like colored text messages that we put up there. Now I can put up pictures. I can put up 3-D graphics. I could put spots on the monitor for advertising if I wanted. I could take your picture before you bowl. Your name comes up with your picture. You could put in your dog’s picture. Some of the league secretaries, I hope they’re creative and find some funny pictures to put up there, just for laughs.
“Any time you bowl, we enter your name and it will keep track of your score for all time,” he added. “I can see, say, the last 20 times I came here, this is what I averaged. It can keep track of how fast you threw the ball. Average speed. How many strikes, it gives you so many statistics. More than you’ll ever even want.”
The video replay feature is something serious bowlers will likely appreciate.
“This is what’s cool,” Platt said. “The camera is 40 feet down the lane. The camera is always running. It has detectors on there. It senses the ball going across and then it plays back to you with video of you throwing the ball. It shows the ball going down the lane. The ball crosses the beam, hits the pins, and the camera switches to another camera, shows the pin action that you had and your ball speed.
“You are the star,” Platt said. “You came down here bowling, whoever you are, especially a new player, and you’re on TV. We upgraded the monitors. We decided to put 50 inch monitors in there because we could make it fit. It looks slick, a lot of color, a lot of animation. A lot of different action. But you’re the star.”
Platt, who also owns the 24-lane Bowl Winkle’s in Eau Claire and the eight-lane Bowl Winkle’s Two in Colby, first had the new scoring system installed at Eau Claire location, which his son Eric, who was two weeks old when the Platts took over the Medford located, now manages.
“I got convinced to buy it in Eau Claire and it did so well that I bought it here,” Platt said.
The history of The Sports Page and facility’s former names is now highlighted on a Wall of Fame, which is posted above the bowling lanes and mark each of the official 300 games rolled there since 1948, with updates forthcoming from 2020 to now.
The first 300 on record was rolled by Chow Werner in 1948, early in the facility’s run as Milly’s Bowl, owned from 1945-71 by Walter and Pearl Mildbrand. It took 20 years for another one to be rolled. That was by Don Meyer in 1968. Medford’s bowling alley was known as Classic Lanes, owned by Henry and Cecelia Tytor and Marvin and Patricia Smith from 1971-77 and Vernon and Geraldine Laduron from 1977-83. Many remember it as Lumpy’s Lanes, owned by Alan and Sarah Ledesma. Alan rolled the third 300 game in 1987. The pace picked up a little bit in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The list of 300 games exploded after new Brunswick Pro Amulane Lanes were installed in 2003, which Platt predicted would happen back then, now includes well over 200, including a record 32 by Rocky Mantik. Casey Nernberger’s name appears on the Wall of Fame 20 times and his league average this year, according to Platt, is in the 240s, which likely ranks among the top bowlers in the nation.
As for reaching 30 years of ownership, Platt said his family, obviously is grateful for the community support through the ups and downs, especially in a time when small-town bowling alleys are disappearing.
“I want this place to sustain itself so the next guy can keep it going,” Platt said. “It was fortunate that I was the guy because I knew a lot of stuff and it was a good community. Everybody around us has failed. We’re fortunate that we’ve got a spot here still going on.”
The community support was never more evident than when the Platts first arrived. Mike Platt got into the bowling business in Kenosha not long after high school, taking a job as a mechanic’s assistant at a 46-lane facility. Not long after that, the business built another 32-lane building, the mechanic he was hired to work under quit and he became the guy, not only in Kenosha but for other alleys in the area as well.
He learned about the opportunity to buy his own business in the early 1990s through his brother-in-law, who was establishing himself in this area as a wellknown teacher and baseball coach.
“Dan Boxx was good friends with Brad Yocum, who was the president of F& M Bank,” Platt recalled. “The whole talk back then was who was going to get the bowling alley. The bank had it, it had gone through foreclosure. Yocum asks Boxx, ‘don’t you know somebody?’ He tells him one of my teachers’ parents have a couple of bowling alleys in the Madison area and Viroqua area. I’ll run it by him. So he runs it by the teacher, who’s my brother in law, Dick Iverson. So Dick says, my parents don’t want this. But he calls me up and tells me, ‘you said you always wanted to move up here. You ought to look at this thing.”
In his first meeting with league bowlers in the summer of 1991, Platt said there was a make-or-break moment he’ll never forget. He said he made the comment that he was going to raise bowling prices $1 per game and, of course, the reaction wasn’t good.
“I said, ‘settle down, I guess I got your attention,’” Platt said. “‘I’m not going to raise it $1 a game. I am going to raise it $1 a week.’ It was a lot, 33 cents a game was a lot. It was a huge raise. I said this is well calculated on my part. I said you saw my picture in the paper with my wife holding my newborn son. I’m a young guy. I figured only a couple of things were going to happen. Number one is, you guys are going to be so mad that half of you are going to quit bowling. I kinda weighed that. Or you can support me. If you support me I have a chance. I have the expertise to make this the finest bowling alley in the nation. I know how to do it, I just don’t have any money. I promise you I’ll get you the best stuff if you do. And you know what, they did. That’s the truth. They stuck by it. They came out the next year. That was a great moment.”
With his son managing the Eau Claire facility and Tyler Messman managing The Sports Page, Platt said the day his involvement in the bowling business ends is coming sooner rather than later. The COVID pandemic of the last year certainly has been a huge hit, but he’s optimistic about the immediate future.
“People are just putting their toe in the water now,” Platt said. “They’re just finally going, ‘maybe I can go out locally.’ I think we’re going to have that for 18 months where people are going, ‘maybe I can do this’ and I want to show them something new (with the scoring system). They’re saying now, ‘I want to take my kids out and do something.’” His goal for next league year is to bring people back to the sport by offering shorter, more flexible league seasons that hopefully can accommodate the schedules of anyone interested in bowling.
“What we’re telling people now with COVID, is when do you want to bowl?” he said. “Do you want to come Tuesday at 4 p.m.? With all of the computers now, I can put you in whatever time you need. You don’t have to bowl every Tuesday at 4 p.m. You can bowl a split shift, you can bowl for eight weeks. When do you want and we’ll figure out something to make it. I’m going to try to really go after that.”
The new scoring system at The Sports Page Bowl and Grill in Medford features a significant upgrade in graphics over the previous system, which was installed in 1994. The Australian-based company Computer Score created the Duo HD system.PHOTOS BY MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS
Video replays show bowlers the pin action after they roll a ball.
Sports Page owner Mike Platt (r.) gets into a bowling discussion with Todd Metz (l.) and Shawn Trimner before league play gets underway on Thursday, March 25.
