Punk Rock Bowling

It seems that almost every year at Punk Rock Bowling someone attempts to cheat their way to the prize money for the bowling tournament so PRB has adopted rules to try to stop this including the following rule set out on the PRB website and in PRB registration materials: "PRB is an amateur bowling tournament for fun. We do not allow pro, semi-pro or amateur tournament or hi roller league bowlers to bowl as it would be unfair to the 98% of bowlers in our tournament who cannot compete with these "elite" bowlers. If you attempt to enter a team member who is overqualified you will be subject to immediate disqualification and a lifetime ban. If in doubt whether your team member is overqualified to bowl at PRB, please email us at [email protected]." Unfortunately this didn't stop this years "winning team" from cheating their way into the tournament and to first place by intentionally misrepresenting their averages as lower than they were. This is the story of Team "GIRLS," a team that lied to win PRB. Back in January we received the following email from Adam Neilson: "Hi, I am interested in entering a team into the tournament but am wondering if we are over qualified. Our averages are 118, 111, 186, and 201." Notice that he was "wondering" if his team was overqualified. In response to this email, we told Mr. Neilson that these averages were acceptable to enter the tournament, however he never told us the names of his teammates or which averages corresponded to which bowler. Josh George, another member of the team in question, ultimately registered the team and clicked the button agreeing to the rules, including the "over qualification" rules, when he paid for his team about a month later. Here's the team he registered: Team Name: Quit Sparin' At Us. (old team name: Quit Sparin' At Us) Bowler 1: Allan Hessler - male - New Bowler (ended up not bowling; replaced by Dave Pilson at PRB) Bowler 2: John Guentener - male - New Bowler Bowler 3: Adam Neilson - male - New Bowler Bowler 4: Josh George - male - New Bowler Team Registration: $220 At no time in any of the emails sent to PRB did either Adam Neilson or Josh George reveal to us that they are both "elite," "high rolling" league bowlers. What we came to discover is that they are both in an "unsanctioned" league where Mr. Neilson and Mr. Adams had the high scratch game and high scratch series scores in their league. More importantly, the averages set out in Mr. Neilson's email of "118, 111, 186, and 201 were substantially lower than the team that was registered. Mr. Adams and Mr. Neilson's other two registered teammates were their teammates from their league who had substantially higher individual averages than represented in the email and their team had the high team scratch score in this league. Why is this important you may ask? Because the team that they registered for PRB actually had averages of 198, 198, 188 & 169 and not 118, 111, 186 and 201. It is apparent that they LIED to get into PRB when they emailed averages for their team that totaled a 616 scratch average when the team they registered was a much better team with a 753 scratch average. Mr. Adam's email under reported his team's average by 137 pins. Had they actually been honest and emailed us with the real averages for their team, they would not have been allowed to enter PRB because their team would have been inappropriately stacked with 4 very strong bowlers that would put the entire PRB field at an unfair disadvantage. This intentional misrepresentation to PRBC was and is grounds for immediate disqualification and a lifetime ban. Later they emailed us again to change the name of their team from "Quit Sparin' At Us" to "GIRLS" before the tournament. However, in spite of having a third opportunity to be up front about their true skill level, they failed to disclose the true averages of the team. Unfortunately we did not discover these facts until after the tournament was over. With nearly 1,000 bowlers spread out over 4 different bowling centers, we have to trust in the honesty and integrity of people. After the playoffs were finished, the team was told to come to the festival to collect their prize money. They replied "what festival? By the time that they arrived at the festival we had become suspicious and asked them about their league bowling status, they told us that they didn't feel it was important that they inform us of this fact, that there were other bowlers from the league at PRB and that they had "done nothing wrong. At this point, even though we suspected something was not right, we were still unaware that they had lied about their team averages. There were some angry people confronting them because we suspected foul play but the "GIRLS" pleaded that they were honest people. Our mistake was believing them and we allowed them to walk away with the first prize money. We trusted that they were being honest, only to find out that they lied. PRB conducted a thorough investigation which showed that they had purposely lied about the averages of the team they entered into PRB for the specific purpose of avoiding the "over qualified" rule and when we confronted them with these facts they said they felt they won the contest "fair and square" and insisted they had done nothing wrong. However, they NEVER replied to the undisputed fact that they broke the rules when they purposely submitted false averages to gain entry to our tournament. We offered them the opportunity to return the money and avoid any public revelation of the dispute and the details of their dishonesty. However, they chose to keep the money, because, after all, that's all they really care about. The spirit of PRB is to come and have fun bowling in competition with old and new friends and that's what 99.99% of the bowlers do. Sadly there are those that just want to win at whatever cost, including CHEATING. We'll have to change the rules next year and be ever more vigilant for that tiny % of dishonest people. For all of you honest Punk Rock Bowlers (and non-bowlers) we wanted to let you know the facts about how the "GIRLS" CHEATED TO WIN PRB. We have posted this story on our website and have linked the story to our FB, Instagram and Twitter feeds and tagged the CHEATERS. If you are as pissed as we are, we encourage you to LET THEM KNOW!