Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Lady Bowler Wins PBA Title

I'm hardly a bowling expert, but I still don't get why professional bowling remains a sex-segregated sport. The same with billiards and darts. Unlike, say, basketball or football, in these sports, the average body size and strength differences between men and women would seem to be irrelevant.

Nonetheless, Kelly Kulick recently won the integrated Professional Bowler's Association Tournament of Champions. After doing so, she aptly noted, "The pins don't recognize gender. And I probably outweigh [the male PBA Player of the Year] by 20 or 30 pounds."

The linked-to article notes that Kulick is the first woman to ever win this particular tournament in its 52-year history. A reasonable reader might infer that women have been competing against men in this tournament for all of these 52 years and that, only now, has a woman "finally" won.

Interestingly, what this particular article does not mention is that this year is also the first that the Tournament of Champions has featured a female competitor. For the first time ever, the PBA gave a berth to "bowling's most prestigious event" to the winner of the Women's World Championship, which Kulick won.

Seems like that would be a relevant fact to include, no?

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