MOORHEAD – The lean, mean bowling machines are back in town, and there’s more than just bragging rights at stake at the Midwest Open Championship at Sunset Lanes in Moorhead.

The best bowling in the Red River Valley continues through Sunday, August 25, when the Midwest Open Championship returns to Sunset Lanes.

Participants compete against each other in tournaments. The goal, of course, is to ensure that no pin remains standing. The weekend’s grand prize is awarded on Sunday, when the remaining top players compete for a prize of $5,000.

Bowling seems simple: throw the ball at a few pins and knock down as many as you can. But according to Marshall Kent, a member of the Professional Bowling Association, there is much more to it than that.

“It can be the simplest sport you’ve ever played. You just throw a ball into the zone and try to knock it over,” he said. “Or it can be the most complicated sport you’ve ever seen. You have to deal with the ball dynamics, the physics behind the impact of the pins and the oil patterns. Just the topography of the lanes themselves is different.”

Like many sports, bowling has its own lingo. Three strikes in baseball is bad news, but three strikes in a row in bowling? That’s good news and is called a turkey.

A full schedule of the tournament can be found on the Facebook page.

Mike McGurran has been a reporter and anchor at WDAY-TV since 2021.