Bowling Alleys safe – for now. But…

The UBA Today has been closely monitoring the situation with the state of the bowling alleys during the COVID-19 epidemic. So we have a quick rundown.

The good news: no alleys are closing via state orders. Yet. The northeast is keeping everything open – though that could change if there’s spikes of the virus that show up.

However, that’s not to say that the alleys are ‘normal’. Most alleys are either at a 25%-50% attendence capacity, or the bowlers can only bowl on every other pair. While that will work in a Ranking or WCS match, and pending on where it’s held, a tournament, it won’t work in a Tour Stop.

Then there’s the driving issue. If you’re in NJ or NY, there’s limited places you can go without self-quarantining yourself for 7-14 days, pending on the rules. If you’re even more northeast, like Rhode Island or Massachusetts, the rules are stricter – you can’t go out of state. And as some tour stops comprise more than one state, the travelling will be an issue.

And then there’s the numbers, which are not expected to go down. This is the second week after Thanksgiving, so those numbers will keep going upwards. And let’s not discuss early January after those Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve get togethers that everyone is being told not to go to but you know people will be going to anyways.

The one shining piece of good news? The vaccines. They are scheduled to be distributed sometime in December in a rollout, BUT due to politics, won’t be distributed to everyone until April / May / June / July – assuming that people will take them. So while it will be helpful, the full impact won’t happen until mid-2021 at best.

So keep following the website for the current updates to what’s going on in the UBA – and the bowling world.