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1975 – present
The test stated: This section tested South Bend's bowling standing directly: whether the city's record carries a national bowling championship tournament or champion of the first rank. It does not. No ABC, WIBC or USBC Open or Women's Championships tournament stands in South Bend's record in the sources reached — Indiana's WIBC championship tournament of the era went to Fort Wayne, in 1961. What South Bend's record does carry is a durable second kind of standing, centered on one house.
The house: Chippewa Bowl, at 225 West Chippewa Avenue, is the city's tournament bowling center across half a century. National associational tournaments have repeatedly chosen it: the Postal Federal Employee National Bowling Tournament bowled in South Bend in 1980 and returned over seven weekends in April through June 2024, its first time back since 1980; the Polish National Alliance held its 69th National Bowling Tournament at Chippewa Bowl on April 10–12, 2015, and the Polish Falcons' national tournament rotated through South Bend's Nest 80 in the same tradition; the Midwest Women's Bowling Tournament put its doubles and singles at Chippewa Bowl in 2020.
The association: The Michiana Bowlers Association, the region's tournament bowlers' organization, was founded at Chippewa Bowl in 1975 and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary there on September 21, 2025, telling its own founding story in the room where it began.
The men's side of the state game: South Bend's place in Indiana bowling is older than the tournament house. Margaret McCurtin of South Bend was elected president of the state women's bowling association in 1950, in the years when that association was building the sanctioned game city by city across Indiana.
The marathon man: South Bend's individual mark in the national record is endurance: Donald Beitler of South Bend, an Indiana State Bowling Hall of Famer who bowled league at Chippewa, reached fifty years of participation in the USBC Open Championships in 2011 — the 142nd bowler in the tournament's history to bowl fifty of them, having debuted in 1959.
Sources:
- Sports Destination Management, 2024 — the PFENBA tournament at Chippewa Bowl, April–June 2024, the first in South Bend since 1980.
- Polish National Alliance — the 69th National Bowling Tournament, Chippewa Bowl, April 10–12, 2015.
- Michiana Bowlers Association newsletter, September 2025 — the fiftieth anniversary at Chippewa Bowl, the 1975 founding.
- Bowl.com, June 2011 — Donald Beitler's fiftieth Open Championships, the 142nd bowler to reach fifty years.
- Indiana women's bowling association minutes — the 1961 WIBC tournament at Fort Wayne, the comparison that bounds South Bend's claim.