By BILL SNIER
snieronbowling.com
CANAL FULTON — First off, I would like to thank all of my friends and followers for their birthday wishes for this old man who is embarking on his 70th year. It means a lot.
But that is not the main reason for this post.
We celebrated our fourth anniversary at www.snieronbowling.com on Oct. 26 and we have come to a decision.
For physical, mental and financial reasons, we have decided to discontinue the site as of this week.
To put it bluntly, I have begun to lose my passion for a sport that has been so much a part of my life for the past 35 years as a writer, participant, tournament director and junior coach.
This has become more like a job than a hobby. The lack of passion was shown when, for the first time in 35 years (outside of a couple of seasons for family reasons) I chose not to bowl a regular league.
And it also has been a losing proposition financially.
Between fees to run the site, travel costs, etc., it has become a drain in an economic time when prices have gone up and other issues have been a drain. Go Fund Me requests recently have netted little, and I don’t want to put a charge on the site due to the complications dealing with it and the readers’ desires.
All this plus the time I have invested on a weekly basis — usually at least two to three hours per day when I’m not at an event — have taken me away from things that require more of my attention.
I first want to thank my family — my lovely and tolerant wife, Anna, and my son, Greg, who doubles as my webmaster — for helping make this a reality just nine months after I retired from newspapers. We were in this together or it never occurs.
Secondly, my two main advertisers — Park Centre Lanes and Ten Back Pro Shop — who have supported me financially from the beginning. If anyone felt I was making any major income from those Google Ads you were seeing on the site, you were badly mistaken.
My thanks to my major donors — the Northeast Ohio Travel League, Ellsworth Auto Body Senior Travel League, Dr. Michael Lykins, Annie Case, Jim Williams, Austin Reinerts, Mark Herdlick, Lynn Herdlick, Robert Arnold, Michael Burns, the Perrine family — who went far beyond expectations in helping out.
Then we have our other contributors who have assisted us over the past three years as we sought help, via Go Fund Me or just cash donations, to keep this alive as long as we were able.
Another journalist who runs a national site called “The 11th Frame” is on the verge of retirement from his newspaper position and has operated his site in conjunction with it. His is a paid site, and he said he will continue to run it up until age 70 — he hopes.
I am at that point now, and after two open heart surgeries, other health issues and dealing with my wife’s own health issues, the time has come to fade into the background.
We leave behind a site on solid footing, with 329,000 total views, 143,000 total visitors and about 1,600 Facebook followers between my two pages. We did our job — and we did it well, we believe, increasing our views and visitors every year.
My last post later this week will be our annual high school bowling preview. I had already sent forms to coaches and many have begun to return them, so I didn’t believe it was fair to not reward their hard work. That season kicks off Saturday at Eastbury Bowling Center in Canton for the Stark County Conference, and I will be there to assist in my role as conference vice president — something I will not be giving up at this point. But my reporting days now are over.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you down the line either at Park Centre (where I will continue to work a couple of nights a week — if they will have me) or while bowling in a senior league (if I’m still able to compete as a substitute).
The site will remain up for a couple of more months until my contract runs out, but I will not be renewing it through the webmaster. We are looking at keeping it alive for those interested in the archives, if we are able.
Goodbye for now — and thanks for all the love and support over these past four years.