It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

We just wanted to grow old together and enjoy whatever success we might find at the United States Bowling Congress Open Championships while enjoying our brotherhood and reminiscing about the all great times we’ve been fortunate enough to experience.

With Steve Richter now being our only guy under age 50, our 11thFrame.com group is much less of a threat to win Eagles than we were a few years ago. But that is the natural order of things and something every sportsman learns to accept.

Unfortunately, the rules changes for the 2017 Open Championships I detailed in this story will force us to break up the lineup that has bowled together since 2001.

Our problem is that Marc McDowell and Mike Shady both are PBA Tour champions and the new rule prohibits Tour champions from bowling together on a team or in doubles. (Mac won five PBA Tour titles, including three in his 1992 BWAA Bowler of the Year campaign, while Shades won in 1992 in Dublin, California.)

The rule has no qualifiers: Mac and Shades have not bowled on Tour full time for more than two decades and in 2017 their last titles will be a quarter-century ago. But they will have the same status for the Open Championships as Jason Belmonte and Sean Rash, which no knowledgeable person can say is anything other than absurd.

I have always felt, said and written that every bowler who pays dues should be able to bowl the Open Championships, and it’s great that that will be the case next year. I would have supported a requirement that a bowler have a minimum number of league games in, with some exception available in case of injury. And I understand the logic of restrictions on who can bowl with who.

But it seems obvious that after a certain amount of time not winning and not competing full time on the PBA Tour, you no longer warrant that status.

At what point should touring and champion status not matter — 5 years, 10 years, 15 years? I’m not sure of the exact number, just sure that at some point it should not matter.

As the rule stands now — and I have no expectation that it will change before 2017 — you must be 60 before your status doesn’t matter, meaning Mac and Shades cannot bowl together again until 2022, provided it's after Mac turns 60 in mid-May 2022.

I’ve been asked an uncountable number of times what we are doing next year and the truth is we have not decided yet: We decided not to decide until after we bowl this year.

The simple decision is for Mac to switch with one of the members of our second team, and our doubles pairings to shuffle, then switch back in 2022 (assuming we’re all still healthy and competing!). Mac made it clear that it won't be Shades switching if it's a simple switch.

But there are some other potential options we may explore. 

Rest assured, the plan is for it to be announced at 11thFrame.com.

How all of this will impact our competition when we take to the lanes on the 5 p.m. squad Friday and 1 p.m. squad Saturday (Reno time) is the wild card for us this year.

The only thing I can guarantee is that it’s going to be emotional — I’ve gotten choked up just thinking about it being our last time together.

Perhaps it will spur us on to an Eagle in our final hurrah. Or maybe it will bring us down.

One thing we have in our favor is that we pretty much know how we are going to attack the lanes, since the patterns are very close to last year and we know what we did right and what we did wrong.

Here is my story on our game plan from last year, here is my story after our terrible team event last year, and here is my story after our stellar minors last year.

About the only thing we are likely to do different this year is to start slightly more inside in team event … and hopefully adjust a lot quicker and better to what we are seeing on the lanes!

Something we do different than we did in the pre-Kegel Ice oil era is trying to avoid being all on top of each other, which leads to a wet-dry reaction that spells doom.

Also in our favor is how hard the lane patterns are and how low the scores are, since we have experience, brains and spare-shooting skills on our side, but almost certainly can’t keep up in a scorefest.

The two balls among the eight I am bringing this year that I am hoping will help me find success are a new Roto Grop HY-WIRE with a 3-inch pin for the fresh and a Storm FIGHT that has proven to be great in competition on the 2016 Open Championships patterns the past couple of months once there is a little transition. Both will likely end up with 1,500 Turbo sandbagger, or 1,000 or even 500 Abralon surface.

There doesn’t seem to be much trick to playing the patterns: Start between 5- and 10-board with fairly closed angles and then gradually open up while continuing to throw to the same box down the lane.

The trick is executing well enough to hit the pocket consistently, as well as carrying, which has been difficult for virtually every player.

However, we do this year, I will look back on the years our five guys — Mac, Steve Richter, myself, Gail Myers Jr. and Mike Shady — made up 11thFrame.com 1 (previously Turbo 2-N-1 Grips and Smith Barney) with much pride and joy, but also some wistfulness.

We enjoyed a lot of success, but if a couple of near-misses had been Eagles we might have been able to stake a claim to greatest team ever at the Open Championships.

And I have what I think is a unique perspective as I was part of what may have been the best 10-man group in Open Championships (then the American Bowling Congress tournament) history: the Kendor/Faball group put together by Rich Wonders of Racine. I was a member from 1984-87 and 1991-92, with the years in between lost to my PBA touring pro status. 

The first team from that group won the team all-events in 1982, 1983 and 1986, Wonders won the all-events in 1982, Wonders and Meisel the doubles in 1982, Terry Kulibert and Gary Daroszewski were second in doubles that year (not on the same pair), Don Cook and Bob Larson won the doubles in 1986, our second team won the team in 1986 and finished second (I think) in team all-events in 1985. There also were several other high finishes in those years, and three players from the teams eventually were inducted into the USBC Hall of Fame (Wonders, Meisel and myself).

Myself, John Wittkowske and Bret Faulkner were part of that group and our current group. 

I have written it many times, but it is fact that I would never have become the bowler I became without being part of that group. And it was the template for what we put together starting in 1998 with our current two teams.

The only change in our two teams since 1998 is Mike Walters for Brian Thyes starting in 2010. The current lineup for our first team started in 2001 after Mac dropped his PBA card at the end of the 2000 season, which made sense since he had only bowled a few Regionals since leaving the PBA Tour.

We won the team event in Reno in 2011 with a memorable closing game that was then the highest game in tournament history, but also left with the lead in 2009 and 2010, finishing third in 2009 when the only two scores to beat us came on the same squad.

But it was the team all-events where the near-misses piled up.

We weren’t far off in 2001 and 2004 before finally breaking through in Baton Rouge in 2005, when Richter and I won the doubles and Richter was second in all-events.

We finished fourth in 2006, just 98 pins out of first, and I will forever believe it was because I left a Storm DIABLO sitting on my dining room floor that I know would have increased my 1,782 all-events score by at least 100 pins — I went through my scoresheets after we were done and counted 45 9-counts and two pocket splits in 90 frames!

In 2007, we took the lead with 10,040 and finished second to Browning Pontiac’s 10,071 with Myers totaling just 1,857 when he hit some tough minors pairs. (Remember there were just four to a pair in minors back then, not all minors squads were on fresh oil and you switched pairs between doubles and singles.)

In 2009, we took the lead with 10,317 and lost to 10,372 by our close friends on Linds Limited. That was another year where I feel my bad ball choices cost us Eagles — I totaled 2,051 all-events with my first two games of team and first game of doubles combined being under 600 while pretty much living in the 1-3!

We took the lead in 2010, although we knew we had no chance of winning when we left.

In 2011, we finished fifth and 252 pins out of first with a minors where we had a good shot going into the last game but suffered an epic trainwreck that included the devastation of a foul by Mac that was later overturned when our DVD conclusively proved that the foul light had gone off before he started his approach.

That last game was one of the few times since I matured as a bowler that I emotionally lost it with Mac’s “foul” and our trainwreck as I collapsed to a 136.

We’ve posted 9,766, 9,987 and 9,738 the last three years with weak team events killing us in 2013 and 2015 and a bad minors pair and my wrist woes curbing us in 2014.

I’m not one for ifs and buts because I’m certain someone could make a strong case for beating us in 2005 and 2011, but I think our legacy would be very different if at least a couple of our team all-events in 2006, 2007 and 2009 had been Eagle winners.

It's made for some nice reminiscing as we grow old together. 

Now it’s time to see if we can add one final story to that legacy.

2016 USBC OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPS
National Bowling Stadium, Reno, Nevada
(Top 10 division leaders with hometown and pinfall)
As of May 10, 2016

REGULAR DIVISION

Team
1, Who's Eddie Byrd? (Stefanie Johnson, Eddie Byrd, James Stephens, Lynda Barnes, Brett Sterley), Fort Worth, Texas, 3,241. 2, S&B Pro Shop 1, Clinton Township, Mich., 3,216.  3, Wickliffe Lanes, Mentor, Ohio, 3,202. 4, Logo Infusion Original, Las Vegas, 3,200. 5, Linds Lakers 1, Brooklyn Park, Minn., 3,187. 6, The Warner Brothas, Louisville, Ky., 3,184. 7, Bowlerama Lanes, Urbandale, Iowa, 3,181. 8, Visionary 1, Arden Hills, Minn., 3,168. 9, Junior Team USA Support 1, Eagan, Minn., 3,167. 10, Eagle Taxidermy, Vancouver, Wash., 3,155.

Doubles
1(tie), Matthew Zitnik, Mayfield Heights, Ohio/Jason Bowles, Euclid, Ohio, and Nick Heilman/Andy Mills, La Crosse, Wis., 1,341. 3, David Ewald, Macomb, Mich./Nicholas Wissinger, Clinton Township, Mich., 1,337. 4, Kevin Tatrow, Bel Aire, Kan./Will Barnes, Austin, Texas, 1,335. 5, Scott Honeysett/Michael Bradfield, Lansing, Mich., 1,334. 6, Michael Lisch, Zionsville, Ind./John Bauerle Jr., Indianapolis, 1,331. 7, Samuel Lantto, Eden Prairie, Minn./Todd Savoy, Superior, Wis., 1,330, 8(tie), Jay Nephew, Houston/Robert Raymond, Pflugerville, Texas, and Jonathan Wilbur, North Clarendon, Vt./Todd Lathrop, Colchester, Conn., 1,328. 10(tie), Scott Pohl, Burnsville, Minn./Mike Rose Jr., West Henrietta, N.Y., and Ricky Boyters/Michael Smith, Newport News, Va., 1,326.

Singles
1, Robert J. Bures, Painesville, Ohio, 815. 2, Matt Smallin, Glenburn, N.D., 785. 3, Camden Rokita, Springfield, Ill., 779. 4, Tim Janz, Beaver Dam, Wis., 770. 5, Will Barnes, Austin, Texas, 764. 6(tie), Tyler Wilds, Three Rivers, Mich., and Thomas Jones, Blaine, Minn., 759. 8(tie), Joe Massey, Flora, Ind., and David Bordson, St. Paul, Minn., 757. 10, Brian Hayes, Lakewood, Colo., 756.

All-Events
1, Robert J. Bures, Painesville, Ohio, 2,122. 2, Joe Massey, Flora, Ind., 2,086. 3, Justin Crumley, Washington, Mo., 2,075. 4, Matt Smallin, Glenburn, N.D., 2,060. 5, Tim Hill, Lincoln, Calif., 2,058. 6, Jeffrey Grego, Fort Wayne, Ind., 2,056. 7, Camden Rokita, Springfield, Ill., 2,055. 8, Jason Bowles, Euclid, Ohio, 2,042. 9, John Bauerle Jr., Indianapolis, 2,039. 10, Michael Edwards, Tulsa, Okla., 2,037.

Team All-Events
1, Junior Team USA Support 1 (Matthew Tuckfield, Anthony LaCaze, Steve Novak, Jeffrey Mersch, Erik Vermilyea), Eagan, Minn., 9,672. 2, Crankers Arn't Us, Aurora, Colo., 9,599. 3, Wickliffe Lanes, Mentor, Ohio, 9,598. 4, S&B Pro Shop 1, Clinton Township, Mich., 9,587. 5,
Linds Lakers 1, Brooklyn Park, Minn., 9,582. 6, Team NABR, West Henrietta, N.Y., 9,525. 7, 5 ICT Bowlers, Johnston, Iowa, 9,488. 8, Visionary 1, Arden Hills, Minn., 9,464. 9(tie), ND Roto Grip, Mandan, N.D., and Maxxx Revs Pro Shop, Peoria Heights, Ill., 9,461.