PBA Women’s Series Showdown
Set for Sunday on ESPN


The 2009-10 PBA Women’s Series presented by BOWL.COM concludes its third season with the PBA Women’s Series Showdown at the new International Training and Research Center Sunday on ESPN with six of the sport’s top women bowlers vying for a $25,000 prize in a unique competition.

The PBA Women’s Series Showdown, presented by BOWL.COM, will air on ESPN Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern.

The made-for-TV women’s event will feature five PBA Women’s Series players who won or placed among the leaders during the World Series of Bowling in Detroit, kicking off the 2009-10 Lumber Liquidators PBA Tour season, and the winner of the Earl Anthony Memorial women’s title held in Dublin, Calif., in January.

The World Series qualifiers were PBA Women’s World Champion Kelly Kulick, Union, N.J.; Viper women’s champion Liz Johnson, Cheektowaga, N.Y.; Chameleon women’s champion Shannon Pluhowsky, Kettering, Ohio; Scorpion fourth-place finisher Michelle Feldman, Auburn, N.Y., (because winner Pluhowsky, runner-up Johnson and third-place finisher Kulick were already qualified), and Shark runner-up Carolyn Dorin-Ballard of Keller, Texas (winner Kulick was already qualified). Stefanie Nation of Grand Prairie, Texas, joined the Showdown field as the Earl Anthony Memorial women’s winner.

Sunday’s unique Showdown format will feature the “Petraglia Scoring System,” introduced in the inaugural Women’s Series Showdown in 2009 which was won by Dorin-Ballard. The Petraglia system awards one point for each ball throw to clear the deck, with the lowest score winning. A perfect game is a 10 – 10 strikes in 10 frames. A bad frame, for example, might be a 7-10 split that typically would require at least three balls to knock all of the pins down.

In the two-hour ESPN finals, Kulick, Nation and Feldman will bowl a one-game match and Pluhowsky, Johnson and Dorin-Ballard will compete in the second opening-round contest. The lowest score in each automatically advances to the title match; the highest score of the six will be eliminated; the other three players will advance to a Wild Card round.

The three Wild Card players will bowl another game, with the winner (lowest score) advancing to the three-player title match.

Dorin-Ballard won the 2009 Petraglia Scoring System-debut event by rolling nine strikes in a row in the title match before converting a single-pin spare in the 10th frame for a score of 11, nipping Jodi Woessner of Oregon, Ohio, by a single point and Nation by two points.