Any
magazine that endeavors to anoint a “Person of the Year” battles the public’s presumption
that any such initiative amounts to little more than a popularity contest. It
is, for any publication that is doing it right, much more a measure of impact
and influence than it is a certificate of congeniality.

To
be sure, much of what this year’s BJI Person of the Year, Bowlero Chief
Customer Officer and PBA CEO Colie Edison, said and did throughout 2019 indeed
was popular with important swathes of the bowling industry — specifically,
those with any personal or professional interest in competitive bowling, chief
among them PBA Tour players.

But
Edison also delivered some tough talk to an industry that needed to hear it,
then went a step further when, in her positions as President of the Bowlero
Elite Series and PBA CEO, she played an integral role in actions that yielded
measurable results in the lives of bowlers and, more broadly, to the future of
the bowling industry.

In
2019, Edison was the face of two of the year’s most consequential stories. When
Bowlero announced it would award an unprecedented $270,000 to the winner of its
inaugural Bowlero Elite Series in April, Edison was the one driving home the
significance of that historic prize and the reasons Bowlero saw fit to award
it. When Bowlero purchased the PBA, it was Edison whose interview with BJI
about the bombshell transaction became the second most-listened-to episode of
The Bowlers Journal Podcast, with 2,033 plays as this issue went to print.

More
important, the substance of what she said as those two stories broke
reverberated throughout the industry with a message that it was time for the
status quo to be set aside in favor of the kind of disruptive change capable of
thrusting the sport into the 2020s with vigor and vision.

“We know that nobody’s
ever bowled for this kind of money, but this is the kind of money these bowlers
should be bowling for. It’s never felt like they’ve gotten the recognition they
deserve,” Edison said when details about Bowlero’s plans for its Elite Series
were announced. “To get bowling into the Olympics, these are the things that
are going to elevate the sport. Like the USBC says, ‘a future for the sport.’ I
think that relies on us making bowling relevant.”

In a world in which
relevance and money often go hand-in-hand, Edison strived passionately
throughout 2019 to achieve both for the sport. After amateur bowler Luis
Gonzalez bagged $270,000 for winning the first of the year’s three Bowlero
Elite Series events, he said he would use the funds to buy a house and put his
son Logan through school. He was doing that with a tremendous paycheck he
earned rolling a bowling ball, and he did it in the national spotlight provided
by NBC Sports network — a platform that likely got younger viewers dreaming of
what might be possible for them too on the lanes in the years ahead.

The importance of the
sport’s ability to reach young people is not lost on Edison.

“We need the next
generation of bowlers to get out on the lanes and start practicing and pursue
their careers because the future of the sport is about youth bowlers,” she told
BJI in September, then went so far as to suggest that the PBA even might
consider a tier of membership exclusive to youth bowlers. Once again: bold
vision, bolstered by a record of equally bold action.

In that same interview,
Edison doubled down on another aspect of the vision for the sport she
previously had shared with us — that something in the system through which
amateurs transition into pros needs to change.

“PBA membership as a whole can be
re-evaluated so that we can bring more people into the fold, and we can create
tiers of membership so that more people can have these opportunities ... But I
think we also need to look at the guys and women who are on tour already, and
how do we make that journey easier for them, too.”

All of which gets to the
“popularity” aspect of this year’s choice for BJI Person of the Year. To whom
among the PBA Tour’s ranks would those words not ring like the sweetest music?
No one with even a passing interest in professional bowling needs to be told
that the pros would like to make more money doing what they love. Which gets to
yet another impact of Edison’s ascendancy in the bowling industry in 2019.

Not even two months after Bowlero’s
announcement that it had acquired the PBA and Edison’s historic rise to the
position of CEO, making her the first woman ever to serve the organization in
that capacity, news broke that prize funds for the 2020 PBA Tour season would
be receiving a $400,000 boost, with extra money injected into every event and
two majors, the Tournament of Champions and the PBA Players Championship, each
paying out a six-figure top prize. Edison is not someone who is content to pay
lip service to the concerns of PBA Tour competitors; she takes action, and
swiftly.

For the breath of fresh air Edison embodied in the industry in 2019, and for the willingness she has demonstrated to act on the vision she communicates in ways that bring tangible change to the lives of bowlers trying to make a living doing what they love, Colie Edison is BJI’s choice for 2019 Person of the Year.  

HONORABLE MENTION: COREY DYKSTRA

In
a year marked by stories of seismic impact to the bowling industry, including
Bowlero’s acquisition of the PBA amid the paradigm shift represented by the
beginning of the PBA’s new era with FOX Sports, it seemed fitting that 2019
would end with arguably the biggest bombshell news of the year: Brunswick’s
acquisition of the assets of Ebonite International in November.

As
was the case when former Brunswick Corp. CEO Dustan McCoy was named BJI Person
of the Year for 2014 after spearheading the decision to divest the corporation
of its bowling arm, here again a Brunswick executive was behind an
industry-shaking development: Brunswick Bowling Products CEO Corey Dykstra. As
BJI’s Person of the Year picks always highlight figures who have been dominant
or influential presences in a given year’s bowling news, our 2019 Person of the
Year feature would be incomplete without recognizing Dykstra for the needed
reality check his company’s bold move to acquire EBI’s assets symbolized.

As Dykstra says in this issue’s report on the transaction, “I’ve said many times, was ripe for consolidation.” Dykstra attributed that conviction in part to “the decline in league bowling over the past 20 years,” which “certainly has made it a challenging business.”

The
move may have come as a shock to followers of the industry or people who
themselves work within bowling, but Dykstra’s clear-eyed analysis of a
situation in which two major manufacturing plants both were operating beneath
capacity — EBI’s in Hopkinsville, Ky., and Brunswick’s in Reynosa, Mexico —
coupled with his courageous decision to act on that analysis in a way that
undoubtedly shook up the industry, made him one of the year’s most influential
figures.

All-Time BJI Persons of
the Year

1987
- Pete McCordic

1988
- Jack Reichert

1989
- Ted Clarkson

1990
- Jim Bennett Jr.

1991
- Del Ballard Jr.

1992
- Mike Connor

1993
- St. Anthony’s Women’s League

1994
- John Falzone

1995
- National Bowling Stadium

1996
- Bill Goodwin

1997
- Doug Stanard

1998
- Asian Economic Crisis

1999
- Don Harris

2000
- Mark Gerberich

2001
- Carolyn Dorin-Ballard

2002
- Pete Weber

2003
- Madeline Dotta and Frank Britt

2004
- Therese Abair

2005
- Tom Clark

2006
- Kelly Kulick

2007
- Jeff Bojé

2008
- John Berglund, Jeff Bojé, Mike Carroll, Joe
Schumacker, Jim Sturm

2009
- Jason Belmonte

2010
- Kelly Kulcik

2011
- Kevin Dornberger

2012
- Joe Kelley

2013
- Chris Hardwick

2014
- Dustan McCoy

2015
- PWBA

2016
- Chris Chartrand

2017
- Trevor Kling

2018
- Tom Clark

2019 – Colie Edison

This story appears in the January issue of Bowlers Journal International. To subscribe now for much more of the industry's best coverage of bowling news and incisive instructional tips and analysis, go here: /bowlers-journal-subscriptions/