FOUR ELECTED TO USBC HALL OF FAME FOR 2020

ARLINGTON, Texas – The United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame will have at least four new members when the 2020 class is inducted April 29, 2020, in Las Vegas.

The USBC Hall of Fame Committee recently elected Patrick Healey Jr. in the USBC Outstanding Performance men’s category, Bob Learn Jr. in the Veterans category, and Andrew Cain and Jim Zebehazy in the Meritorious Service category.

In addition to the four elected, the USBC Hall of Fame Committee selected eight bowlers – six men and two women – for the Superior Performance ballot that will be distributed to a national panel of USBC Hall of Fame members, USBC Board members and veteran bowling writers.

Selected for the men’s national ballot are Patrick Allen of Garfield, New Jersey; Bryan Goebel of Shawnee, Kansas; Wes Malott of Pflugerville, Texas; Randy Pedersen of Orlando, Florida; Mike Scroggins of Amarillo, Texas, and Mark Williams of Beaumont, Texas.

Named to the women’s national ballot are Marianne DiRupo of Succasunna, New Jersey, and Tammy Turner of West Palm Beach, Florida.

Healey Jr., 51, of Niagara Falls, New York, was a three-time member of Team USA (1991-1992, 1995). In Pan American Games competition, he brought home two gold medals (team, Masters) from the 1991 event in Havana, Cuba, and won three golds (doubles, team, Masters) and a silver (singles) at the 1995 event in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He won gold in doubles and trios at the 1991 World Championships in Singapore, gold in Masters at the 1991 United States Sports Festival, and took the title at the 1995 QubicaAMF World Cup in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He also earned six gold medals at the 1995 Tournament of the Americas.

The 1994 U.S. National Amateur champion, Healey Jr. took third at the 1995 Brunswick World Tournament of Champions as an amateur and also is a two-time World Team Challenge champion (1995, 1997). He is a two-time World Amateur Bowler of the Year (1995, 1996) and was named to the Bowlers Journal All-Century Team for the American Zone (1999).

He was selected the United States Olympic Committee Athlete of the Year for Bowling in 1991 and 1995.

Healey Jr. started bowling in international tournaments in 1990 and has earned 24 wins in international competitions. He has a 300 game in nine countries and won titles in 14 countries and on six continents. He was invited to be part of the 1992 Olympic Games American Bowling Congress team to help promote the sport of bowling and the sport’s quest to gain medal status.

He was a member of the Lodge Lanes team that won the Team All-Events title at the 1997 and 1998 USBC Open Championships. He has four additional top-10 finishes at the event.

A regular on the PBA Tour for nearly a decade, Healey Jr. won three titles, including the PBA Tournament of Champions in 2003. He officially retired from competition in 2008.

The 1986 Chuck Hall Star of Tomorrow award winner, he attended Wichita State University from 1986-1990 and was a National Collegiate Bowling Coaches Association (NCBCA) first-team All-America selection in 1988.

Learn Jr., 57, a native of Erie, Pennsylvania, currently serves as the head coach of the men’s and women’s bowling programs at Martin Methodist College in Tennessee.

He joined the PBA Tour in 1981, winning five titles, including the 1999 U.S. Open. In 1996, he rolled a 300 game in the opening match of the PBA Flagship Open televised finals, the 10th perfect game in a televised PBA event, to earn a $100,000 bonus and the nickname Mr. 300. He then posted games of 270, 280 and 279 to win the title and shatter the highest two-game (570), three-game (850), and four-game (1,129) series in PBA television history.

He also owns three PBA50 titles and, in 2017, made the stepladder finals in six of 11 events.

A two-time member of Senior Team USA, he earned a gold medal in team at the 2015 World Bowling Senior Championships in Las Vegas and captured gold in doubles and team at the 2017 event in Unterfohring, Germany.

A USBC Silver coach, Learn Jr. is a former Team USA coach and has conducted bowling clinics throughout the world.

He won the ESPY Award for bowling in 1997, was a Bowlers Journal All-America first-team selection in 1995-1996, and a USBC first-team All-American in 1996 and 1999. He is a member of the Erie Bowling Association and Pennsylvania State Halls of Fame.

Cain, 38, of Phoenix, was a five-time member of Team USA and has bowled on the PBA Tour since 2007, but made his biggest mark in the sport off the lanes.

He joined the USBC Board of Directors in 2007, was named vice president in 2010, and then took the reins as president in 2012. During his three-and-a-half years as USBC president, Cain was instrumental in the creation of International Bowling Campus Youth Development, combining the youth forces of USBC and the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America (BPAA) to streamline and improve participation in youth bowling.

Also, during his tenure, the Professional Women’s Bowling Association (PWBA) was restarted through a joint effort with BPAA, as was the U.S. Open, also with support from BPAA.

Cain served on the BPAA, Strike Ten Entertainment, and The Bowling Foundation boards, and, after completing his term on the USBC Board, he continues to serve bowling at the national level as a member of the USBC Equipment Specifications Committee and on the SMART board.

On the lanes, Cain was a two-time first-team All-American at Arizona State University and was named the 1999 Chuck Hall Star of Tomorrow. He won the 2001 U.S. Amateur Championships, is a five-time member of Team USA (2002-2003, 2005, 2016-2017) and was a member of Junior Team USA in 2001.

As a member of K&K Bowling Services 5, Cain captured the Team All-Events title at the 2011 USBC Open Championships.

He joined the PBA Tour in 2007, making the televised finals in his first PBA event (Dick Weber Open), where he finished fourth. He was named the 2007-2008 PBA West Region Player of the Year, as well as 2007-2008 PBA West and Northwest Region Rookie of the Year. In 2017, the left-hander rolled a PBA five-game record of 1,352, including a 300 game, in the PBA Cheetah Championship at the National Bowling Stadium.

Zebehazy, 66, of Leesburg, Florida,  was instrumental in promoting and developing youth bowling and helped lay the groundwork for the Junior Gold Championships.

He started his career in the bowling industry in 1971 as a pinsetter mechanic and pro shop rep at Airport Bowling Center in Buffalo, New York, and later joined the Buffalo Bowling Association board.

In 1983, he became a field representative for the American Bowling Congress (ABC), visiting more than 1,500 associations in the Northeast and teaching Certified Lane Inspection Workshops. He took over as ABC’s Group Executive for Field Service in 1989.

In 1998, he was named Executive Director of the Young American Bowling Alliance (YABA), overseeing staff, programs and services, and strategic planning. During his tenure, he implemented David Dahm’s concept of the Junior Gold program, provided the vision for the USBC Youth Open Championships, and initiated the Gift For Life Scholarship program.

He was directly responsible for the creation of the Registered Volunteer Program (RVP), one of the first safety programs put into place in the world of youth sports, and was a key person in improving and advancing the Scholarship Management and Account Reporting for Tenpins (SMART) program.

His role in YABA ended with the merger of the sport’s major organizations to form USBC in 2005. He supported the merger and played an integral role in helping to push the initiative to completion. The YABA board created the Annual Zeb Scholarship in 2005 in recognition of his dedication to the organization.

He joined USBC in 2005 as a field representative, a position he held until his retirement in 2015.

In 2010, Zebehazy received the Kerm Helmer Horizon Award, given to leaders in the youth bowling community who have displayed the courage, determination, and ability to develop far-reaching programs of national scope that provide fun and exciting opportunities.

The 2020 USBC Hall of Fame Class will be inducted April 29, during the USBC Convention at The Orleans Hotel and Casino.

Through 2019, there are 432 members of the USBC Hall of Fame – 223 in Superior Performance, 120 in Meritorious Service, 51 in Veterans, 22 in Pioneer and 16 in Outstanding USBC Performance.

The USBC Hall of Fame was created in 2005 by merging the former American Bowling Congress and Women’s International Bowling Congress Halls of Fame.

Visit BOWL.com/HallofFame for more information on the USBC Hall of Fame.

Bowling Superstar Don Carter Dies

Bowling’s original superstar, Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) and United States Bowling Congress (USBC) Hall of Famer Don Carter, died at his home in Miami Thursday night. Carter, who had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia complicated by emphysema, was 85.

Carter rocketed to fame during bowling’s so-called golden era of team bowling in the 1950s, but at that same time he was a dominant figure in the emerging world of sports television. He is widely remembered as a member of fabled Budweisers of St. Louis, but most of the world got to know him through his appearances on television shows like Jackpot Bowling, Make That Spare, Championship Bowling and numerous others. He also traveled the world making appearances for Brunswick and Budweiser.

In great part due to his high standing among his fellow competitors, Carter became a leading force in the formation of the PBA in 1958. After appearing on an Akron, Ohio, radio program hosted by attorney Eddie Elias where he talked about the importance of building a professional bowling tour similar to what golf had created, Carter and his fellow Budweisers’ teammates (Dick Weber, Ray Bluth, Tom Hennessey and Pat Patterson) convinced a group of other players to pledge $50 each to back Elias’ plan and get the PBA off the ground.

The PBA was launched in 1959 with three tournaments, but only three years later it had a schedule of 32 events and Carter was one of its stars, eventually winning seven PBA titles including five major championships.

Carter won two of the seven PBA Tour events conducted in 1960 including the PBA National Championship. His other major wins were four BPAA All-Star titles (the forerunner of the PBA U.S. Open) and the 1961 American Bowling Congress Masters. He also won a record five World Invitational titles – a grueling 100-game marathon – and he won four ABC Tournament titles.

The St. Louis native first experienced the sport at age 13.

“We were very poor but my mother managed to give me one game of bowling for my 13th birthday,” Carter said in an article written by the late Hall of Fame bowling writer and long-time friend Dick Evans. “That was the biggest birthday present of my life. I enjoyed that one game so much that when one of my teachers started a bowling club after school, I signed up. Then I started setting pins so I could bowl and practice for free.”

It was at that early age that he also developed his unique, unorthodox bowling style, using a bent elbow and a deep knee bend to almost push the ball down the lane. Carter later said his technique evolved because he started bowling with balls that had very large finger holes, and that’s the only way he could hold onto the ball.

Carter also was a good athlete in other sports, including baseball. After serving a tour of duty in the United States Navy during World War II in the South Pacific, Carter signed a minor league baseball contract with the Philadelphia Athletics organization as pitcher-infielder. But after a year he returned to St. Louis and took a job at Golden Eagle Lanes where he began taking up the sport seriously.

His bowling career gained momentum in 1951 when he was invited to bowl on the Pfeifer Beer team in Detroit. Then his long-time St. Louis bowling friends, including Bluth, Hennessey and Whitey Harris, convinced Anheuser-Busch to sponsor their team. With the brewery’s financial backing secured, the group lured Carter back to town and their Budweiser team became arguably the most famous bowling team in history. A great deal of the team’s fame came after it recorded a 3,858 five-player team series in 1958, a record that stood until 1994.

At the height of his fame, Carter was as recognizable among American sports heroes as Mickey Mantle, Johnny Unitas and Arnold Palmer. And he accomplished something none of those sports legends had ever done when he became the first athlete in American sports history to sign a $1 million sports marketing endorsement contract with bowling ball manufacturer Ebonite in 1964.

Carter received virtually every honor available within the sport. He was voted Bowler of the Year six times (1953, 1954, 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1962). He served as the PBA’s first president. He was inducted into the ABC Hall of Fame in 1970, alongside his close friend and teammate Dick Weber, and he was a charter member of the PBA Hall of Fame in 1975, also joined by Weber, Bluth, Carmen Salvino, Harry Smith and Billy Welu. 

Carter was selected as the Greatest Bowler of All-time in a 1970 Bowling Magazine poll, ranked second in Bowling Magazine’s “20 Greatest Bowlers of the 20th Century” poll in 2000, and he was voted the 11th greatest PBA player of all-time as part of the organization’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2009.

Because of deteriorating knee injuries, Carter retired from PBA competition in 1972 and settled in Miami, FL, with wife and fellow hall of fame bowler Paula Sperber where he owned a chain of bowling centers bearing his name.

Because he hated to fly, and didn’t like public speaking, Carter rarely ventured far from home in retirement, although he did regain widespread public exposure in the 1980s when he appeared in a series of Miller Lite commercials featuring retired sports stars.

“I really don’t think anybody under the age of 65 remembers me,” Carter said about his Miller Lite appearances. “I’m really big with senior citizens. I’m famous because I’m the only guy to have two wives (Paula and first wife Laverne) in the (Women’s International Bowling Congress) Hall of Fame.”

Details regarding memorial services for Carter are pending.

“It is impossible to put into words what Don Carter meant to the PBA and sport of bowling,” said PBA Commissioner Tom Clark. “There is no way to fill the void left by his passing. Our deepest sympathies to his wife Paula and his family. He was a pioneer, a champion and will never be forgotten."

“It’s a sad day,” said long-time teammate Ray Bluth. “You’re never really prepared, and when you think of how many guys we had on our team over the years, I’m the only original and Bill (Lillard), who joined later, are the only ones left.

“Don was the greatest bowler of his era,” Bluth continued. “There was no one like him. Don was the star of the (Budweisers). He was our leadoff man. He wasn’t too gung-ho about that role, but he kept getting strikes and so did the rest of us, so he stayed there. It was just a great experience bowling with Don.”

“He’ll be missed. He was a great guy; he was hard to get to know, but once you did, he was your friend forever,” Lillard said. “They always ask who was the best bowler ever. There wasn’t much difference between some of the top guys, but Don beat me relentlessly, so in my eyes, he was the greatest ever.”

“Don was one of the greatest bowlers who ever lived, but he had some other things that made him great,” Salvino said. “He was a great athlete. He won two 100-game tournaments in one year and I don’t know how many other bowlers could take that kind of punishment. And he had the ability to focus better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

“On the lanes, he was in his own world, but off the lanes, he was a true gentleman,” Salvino added. “I had a lot of respect for him, as a bowler and as a man.”

We add our condolences, to the Carter family and to Don's many friends and fans, at the loss of one of the sports greats.