To know Luci Bonneau was to never forget her.

“She was very noticeable because she was a very attractive woman,” says 17-time Professional Women’s Bowling Association titlist Robin Romeo of her fellow competitor. “She always stood out when you walked by her because she just had an aura about her. She represented bowling extremely well.”

In Luci Bonneau, a long-time bowler on the PWBA tour herself, breast cancer encountered the spirit of a woman who did not like to lose – a woman who discovered a new passion even in the very fight that threatened to take her life.

“If I survive, we’ll put on a tournament to raise money for breast cancer research,” she said to her good friend, Donna Conners, in the midst of her cancer battle.



As with too many of the 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year, though, Luci Bonneau did not survive. But breast cancer could not kill the dream she shared with Conners that day.

That dream became a promise that Donna Conners kept for the next ten years, as the Luci Bonneau Memorial Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles Tournament attracted some of the country’s greatest bowlers to Palace Lanes in Houston every summer.

But after a decade in which she worked on Luci’s dream until it became one of the most galvanizing forces that the Houston community has ever seen, Conners wondered if it was time to move on.

“It had been such a successful run that I thought maybe 10 years was the magic number,” Conners recalls. “I thought maybe I should quit.”

And that is when the cause to which the tournament is devoted — raising funds for the Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research — hit home in Donna’s life in the same way it hits home in the lives of so many Americans.

“I got a phone call in November telling me that my cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer,” Conners explains. “And she said that doctors told her she couldn’t get in for treatment for five or six weeks. So I called Stehlin and they set up an appointment with an oncologist for the very next day. She had surgery a week later and bowled the Pro-Am at the Luci tournament this year in the middle of her chemo treatment.”

If you are just learning about the person whom many refer to as one of the hardest-working women in bowling, that is probably the best place to start: Donna Conners gets things done. She gets things done for Luci, for the many people like her whose lives were truncated by a disease that has affected nearly everyone’s life in one way or another. Most of all, she gets things done for those who will someday call a loved one with the same tough news that Donna’s cousin delivered last November.

“When I got that call from my cousin, that’s when I decided that that’s what it’s all about. That’s the reason why I keep doing this every year,” Conners says. “The bowlers bring so much to the table, the Pro-Am brings so much. And without the Pro-Am, we have no charity, and without the players we don’t have a Pro-Am. I am already committed to doing it again next year.”

Anyone who has ever experienced the Luci Bonneau Mixed Doubles Tournament understands that when Conners says she’s committed, she means that she’s committed. She means the months she will spend working her cell phone to the tune of hundreds of calls to sponsors, the whole days of door-to-door promotion at bowling centers and local leagues, junior programs, pro shops.

She means the moments of exhilaration she will feel as companies from across the corporate spectrum ask to have their names appear across the shirts of next year’s bowlers – everyone from bowling suppliers to local banks, bike shops to power companies and so many others.

“For our raffles this year we had people donate coffee mugs, we had a lady make sandals for people to wear when they go get pedicures,” Conners says of this year’s tournament. “People donated barbecue pits, motorized scooters, gift baskets to auction off. It’s just incredible.”

“Donna Conners goes above and beyond most tournament directors I’ve ever known,” says two-time PBA Women’s Series titlist Stefanie Nation. “Every year she’s raffling off LCD TVs, iPods, purses, gift cards. It just adds that personal touch to the event itself. I almost never mail in my entry for a tournament, but for this one you have to because you know it will sell out.”

“I can honestly say that it’s the one tournament out of the year where if you don’t make the cut you can still say you had a great time,” says Team USA member Emily Maier. “It’s clear that Donna is very passionate about what she does. It was only March when she put a message up on Facebook saying she only had a few spots left — for a tournament that was still four months away! And I said ‘Wow! I better get my entry in!’”

Each year you’re as likely to spot a pair of hall of famers such as Parker Bohn III and Carolyn-Dorin Ballard at the Luci tournament as you are to find a duo of house bowlers from the local Thursday night league up the block. Some participants will be cancer survivors themselves; some will be survivors of loved ones whose lives cancer claimed. Every one of them, though, will be there because they know that no one is exempt from the grasp of this disease.

“There was a male survivor of breast cancer at the tournament this year as well,” says 2010 USBC Queens runner-up Tennelle Milligan, who bowled the tournament for the second time. “That’s a part of the disease that doesn’t get much publicity, but it can affect men, too.”

The list of bowlers who come from around the country to compete in Luci Bonneau’s name each year reads like a scoreboard on a major stop on tour: Chris Barnes, Wes Malott, Tommy Jones, Lynda Barnes, Michael Fagan, Sean Rash, Shannon O’Keefe, Dino Castillo.

They come from California. They from New Jersey, and South Carolina, and upstate New York. They come to prove that the day Luci Bonneau lost her battle with breast cancer was the day the bowling world decided to win the war.

“I make the trip because Donna has done such an unbelievable job building a great event,” says Romeo, who traveled from California this year and put on a blistering performance in which she led all qualifiers – including every exempt PBA player in the field. “The whole weekend is an amazing experience and it’s for a good cause. And just seeing the work that one person does just makes you want to be a part of it.”

“Donna treats the bowlers like she appreciates them, and it makes us want to give back to her,” adds Tommy Jones, who won the tournament for the third time this year with his partner Shannon Pluhowsky. 

But whether they win or lose, whether they go home with a new TV or a coffee mug, every Luci tournament bowler knows that by the time the last raffle number is called and the final shot of the weekend is thrown, they have just experienced one of the most memorable weekends of the year.

“Until you’ve come and been in this building for this tournament, you can’t experience what it’s about,” Conners says. “When you’re out there and you’re looking across the bowling center, and you see wall-to-wall people having fun and laughing, it is just breath-taking.”

“Once you’ve bowled it for the first time, you’re hooked,” explains Kristin Warzinski, one of this year’s competitors.

As for Luci Bonneau, the woman whose inspiration turned a dream into a legacy, Donna Conners knows one thing for sure: “I think she would say she really hates missing out on bowling this tournament because she was such a competitor, she loved to bowl. But she would be very pleased to see that this event is doing so well.”