Not a perfect game: Jaybowl’s 62-year run ends Saturday

People bowl and socialize at the Jaybowl during the 1950s. Photo courtesy of Spencer Research Library, Kansas University Libraries.

Instead of the machines used to reset scattered pins between rolls today, Jaybowl once relied on semi-automatic technology.

It involved a lever-operated tray and small, spry people.

As a child in the 1950s, Thomas Wilcox, of Lawrence, was one of those Jaybowl pinboys, working Saturdays at the end of the bowling lanes in the Kansas University Union.

“Sometimes that job was a little risky, as some people did not always pay attention to whether we had finished clearing the pins before they threw another ball,” Wilcox said. “So once in a while, one of the setters would take a flying leap out of the pit to behind a padded barrier for protection. It was close sometimes.”

When the 62-year-old Jaybowl closes Saturday, following a day of festivities, it will be for good.

As times have changed, so has Jaybowl — ultimately going away altogether. Union leaders say dwindling crowds and revenue led to their decision to close Jaybowl and repurpose it into some other type of gathering space.

Last day

The Jaybowl’s last day is Saturday. Planned events:

Private services: 1-4 p.m.

Jaybowl team and alumni gather for one last tournament.

Farewell Fling: 8-10 p.m.

Free hot dogs, popcorn and soda as well as free bowling for all guests — students, alumni and their families.

Cosmic Bowling and goodbye sendoff: 10 p.m.-12:55 a.m.

Black lights, mirror balls and the dark void usher in the final hours. Each half hour’s music selection will reflect the tunes of the decade from the 1950s to the present.

Ceremonial Last Strike: 12:55 am

The pins will be set on all lanes one last time and brushed into eternity with a sequential sweep starting on lane 1 and ending on lane 12.

Entry and exit into the Kansas Union after 11 p.m. on May 9 will be through the Mississippi Streey entrance on Level 1.

Over the summer, a commemorative tribute will be in display cases outside the Jaybowl entrance. The current interior “party room” will be renamed the “Spare Room” and repurposed as an event space containing bowling mementos.

Memorabilia will be sold at the Jaybowl counter starting May 4 and will conclude on May 9, or until depleted.

The 2014-2015 KU bowling team, pictured at Royal Crest Lanes, where they began practicing several years ago.

When it opened in the sub-sub basement of the Union in 1953, Jaybowl featured six lanes along with two billiard tables and two snooker tables, according to a KU Alumni Association newsletter article for Jaybowl’s 50th anniversary. There were bowling classes in the mornings, and open bowling afternoons and evenings.

Wilcox said back then Saturdays at the Jaybowl were busy, often with families and college students bowling before and after football games.

“They had a good time,” he said.

Also according to the Alumni newsletter:

When the Union was expanded in 1960, the Jaybowl reopened bigger and better, in its current location. It grew to 12 lanes, six billiard and snooker tables, and featured the “first generation” of automatic pinsetters.

Snooker to Space Invaders

In 1977, after a fierce debate, the Union and Jaybowl started selling beer at the request of students. The same year, the Pladium bowling alley at Ninth and Mississippi streets closes, creating a boom for Jaybowl, at least until Royal Lanes opened at 33rd and Iowa two years later.

The 1980s saw the replacement of some of the pool tables with 15 video games — including Pac Man and Space Invaders — and other upgrades to the facility.

Late-night techno-bowling, now billed as Cosmic Bowling, arrived in the 1990s.

Beer sales at the Union ended in 1998 and have not returned since, despite an organized student proposal in 2008, according to a Journal-World article.

By 2000, the Union was considering a plan to tear out the Jaybowl and replace it with a 24-hour computer lab, coffee shop and game room, the Journal-World reported.

At the time, Union director David Mucci said Jaybowl had lost between $850 and $7,450 during the past five years. He said Jaybowl was logging 35,000 visits a year, and a study indicated that a computer lab could draw 170,000.

Ultimately that plan was scratched and the Jaybowl got a new lease on life, closing for a yearlong renovation and reopening in 2002.

Still struggles

That lease has now run out.

The Union announced on April 14 that Jaybowl would close, and this time it wasn’t a proposal.

Jaybowl has experienced an average loss of $17,000 a year the past five years, and annual users average 21,000, said Claudia Larkin, Union marketing director.

In keeping with the Kansas Board of Regents noncompete policy, Larkin said marketing, events and promotions have targeted the student campus audience.

As part of a process to plan the next all-Union renovation, hoped to occur in the next three to four years, the Union has held focus groups with students, faculty and staff, programs director J.J. O’Toole-Curran said. She said feedback indicated there could be “a better use” for the space occupied by Jaybowl.

“I think, for the KU campus, it was declining in popularity,” she said.

O’Toole-Curran said most of Jaybowl’s revenue came from daily walk-in traffic paying for bowling, food and shoes. There was some revenue from birthday parties, and fees paid by students in KU bowling classes. A small engraving business once brought some revenue, but that has been moved to be part of the bookstore, she said.

‘Heartbreaking’ for bowling team

Perhaps nobody is more disappointed about Jaybowl closing than the KU Bowling Team, which notched two national championships in the Jaybowl’s lifespan, in 1963 and 2004.

Team president Kyle Rosberg, a senior from Mission, said the team has not been able to practice at Jaybowl for the past two years because the equipment there has not been maintained well enough. Rosberg said the team now practices at Royal Crest Lanes, 933 Iowa, where lanes are oiled daily, machinery is fixed promptly and ball-return chutes don’t damage players’ own costly bowling balls.

But Rosberg said he misses the days when Jaybowl was their home.

“It felt more like a team practicing in our own facility with everything there,” he said, “whereas at Royal Crest, it’s more like, ‘Oh, they let us practice here.'”

Plus, Rosberg said, Jaybowl was convenient. His freshman year he was there almost every day, easily stopping in to practice when he had a break between classes.

The on-campus lanes helped recruit bowlers to the team, too, said Burton Gepford, a former KU bowler who coached the team and managed Jaybowl from 2010 to 2012.

“There was something special about saying, ‘We meet at the Jaybowl, right here on campus, been here since 1953,'” Gepford said. “So you’re using the history.”

Gepford said it’s especially “heartbreaking” to see Jaybowl closing because — with high school bowling booming — he’s optimistic that competitive and social bowling are on an upswing.

Gepford coaches bowling at Free State High School, which has full varsity and junior varsity teams for both boys and girls.

“Bowling is a lifetime sport,” he said.

Other campuses

Michael Fine’s 19 years as KU bowling coach and Jaybowl manager included 2004, when KU bowlers won the national title.

Fine now coaches and manages the bowling facility at Florida State University.

“At other schools, bowling has stayed relevant as a student activity,” he said. But like any business, he said, it takes investment.

Wichita State University, for one, just completed a renovation to its on-campus bowling facility, home to the 20-time national champion men’s and women’s Shocker bowling teams.

Kansas State University’s 16-lane Wabash Cannon Bowl is open daily, and serving beer, until 11 p.m. or 1 a.m. most days, according to its website.

Florida State recently renovated its facility, too, and it’s a popular alternative to leaving campus to hit the bars, Fine said.

At its best, that’s what Jaybowl was, too, Fine said.

“I’m a big believer in the co-curricular experience,” he said. “It was more than just lanes; it was a home away from home, a big part of the classic union model as the living room of campus.”

What’s next

O’Toole-Curran said the Union wants to maintain that philosophy for whatever replaces the Jaybowl.

In the short term, the area will close for the summer for renovations that will make it functional as an event space.

She said they’re looking at other more drastic changes as a possibility for a couple years out. She said a pub and grill are possibilities.

Whatever it ends up, she said, the space will include some kind of tribute to Jaybowl’s long history there.

As for KU’s longstanding tradition of bowling classes?

KU Health Science and Exercise Science department chair Joe Weir said he thought at first it would die with Jaybowl.

But Gepford, the ex-KU bowling coach, approached him and offered to instruct the one-credit activity courses at Royal Crest instead. So as long as students still enroll, Weir said, that’s where bowling classes will be this fall.