Resch Lanes hosts holiday fundraiser

WITTENBERG — Five years ago, Jason Resch, owner of the Resch Lanes bowling center in Wittenberg, thought it would be fun to have a tournament during the Christmas season when the league bowlers are on break.

With a theme of “naughty and nice” as a nod to the Santa season and a unique way of keeping score where nine pins is considered a strike, the nine-pin tournament was born.

“I wanted to have a fun tournament during the holiday season which could also benefit a local charity,” said Resch. “I figured that filling the food pantry before Christmas was an easy choice considering the time of year.”

The 2019 Naughty and Nice nine-pin tournament entry fees raised $315 and bowler Heather Giddings added $20, bringing the total to $335 for the Wittenberg Food Pantry.

Resch runs the tournament on the second and third weekends of December, which gives participants the flexibility they need during the busy season. He also offers three shifts which leads to the potential to field 24 teams in the tournament. This year’s event had a total of 21 teams with bowlers coming as far away as Merrill and Stevens Point.

“We do a number of events that people from around the area can only do here and they like coming to Wittenberg,” said Resch.

The Legacy Seed Pros is made up of local bowlers Jeremy Falkowski, Tim Lemke and Ron Onesti, and they won the event this year to earn $210.

Jennifer Shrank, Wittenberg, finished in first place in the singles event. She competed on the Wittenberg-Birnamwood girls varsity team in 2015 when they won the State High School Title. She currently attends University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and bowls in the Monday night women’s league at Resch Lanes.

Heather Giddings and her teammates bowl Monday nights for the Lisa’s at Lakeside team and signed up for the tournament. According to Resch, Giddings had a great night, throwing two 300 games in the nine-pin tap meaning she only needed to knock down nine pins to count as a strike.
There were a total of 252 games bowled in the tournament, only 11 were 300s and Giddings had two of them which is a nice accomplishment, said Resch. There were 19 other bowlers that have averages equal or higher to hers and only one bowler did as well as she did.