The Columbus Sports Scene Blog…………….. via the Greater Columbus Sports Commission

Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 3! From 4-7:30 p.m. at Field Sports of Sports Ohio in Dublin, the Ohio Machine is holding their first ever Ohio Machine Players Clinic presented by Ohio State University Sports Medicine. And boy do they have a star-studded line-up for you to enjoy that day!!

For only $30, 5th, 6th and 7th grade boys will receive exclusive instruction from Greg Bice, Stefan Schroder, Max Schmidt, Nolan Godfrey, Joel Zalesky, Eric O’Brien, Brian Yontz and Matt Cafarelli. These professional players will bring world-class perspective and dynamic instruction to help children learn from the best while having fun in a great environment.

The Ohio Machine have put together a really exciting day of lacrosse, but there’s even more! With your registration you will also receive one ticket to the team’s historic Inaugural Season home opener on May 19th and a Machine t-shirt. And that’s not all: the day will also feature important health & safety tips courtesy of OSU Sports Medicine and conclude with an awesome Q&A and autograph session with the players. They’ll even have some great prize raffles to cap off this great day of lacrosse.

The Machine hope you are as fired up about this clinic as they are. Make sure you sign-up today as there will not be any availability for walk-up registration. Online registration takes place by clicking here. You can also call their office at (614) 754-1973. Welcome to the Machine!

All participants will be required to complete a participation waiver prior to attending the clinic and players are subject to change without notice.

                    Presented by Columbia 300 at Sequoia Pro Bowl from Feb. 16-19

The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) Tour returns to Sequoia Pro Bowl in Columbus for the fifth season with Columbus’ own and PBA Hall of Famer Wayne Webb competing. The Ricart Ford Open, presented by Columbia 300, will be conducted Feb. 16-19 at Sequoia Pro Bowl and will be a showcase of emerging international talent competing on Tour this year.  Eight countries (Australia, Canada Colombia, England, Finland, Sweden, Venezuela and the U.S.) will be represented.

Kicking off the tournament weekend on Feb. 16 will be the fourth annual Don Johnson Memorial fundraising event benefiting juvenile diabetes and Nationwide Children’s Hospital of Columbus, which has raised over $110,000 in the past three years of the event. The tournament also features a lineup of pro-ams on Feb. 17, during which local bowlers can sign-up for a night of bowling and fun with the PBA stars.

Tickets for Thursday nights Carni-bowl Fundraiser, Saturday Qualifying Rounds, Sunday Match Play Rounds and the Sunday night Xtra Frame stepladder style Finals are available in person at Sequoia Pro Bowl or on line at SequoiaProBowl.com or PBA.com.  You can enter Pro Ams at www.SequoiaProBowl.com or in person at the lanes.

The Competition

Two of the top-ranked players in the world are from Finland – reigning PBA Player of the Year Mika Koivuniemi and recent PBA World Championship winner Osku Palermaa. Koivuniemi will be trying for his 10th PBA Tour title and Palermaa his third.

Palermaa is also one of three players on Tour using the unique two-handed delivery which Jason Belmonte of Australia made famous in 2009 when he became the first player to use the unique delivery to win a PBA Tour event. The other two-hander on Tour is former Junior Team USA member Brian Valenta of Lockport, Ill.

Battling the growing contingent of international players competing on the PBA Tour will be the best from the U.S. including Hall of Famers Walter Ray Williams Jr., Pete Weber, Parker Bohn III, Amleto Monacelli and Columbus’ own Wayne Webb.

Other stars entered to compete are former PBA Players of the Year Chris Barnes and Patrick Allen.  Also competing will be Mike Fagan who won the recent Alka-Seltzer Plus Liquid Gels USBC Masters for his third career title and first major.  Barnes will be returning as a fan favorite having won two of the four PBA events previously held at Sequoia Pro Bowl.

When the PBA Tour last visited Columbus in 2010, Mike Scroggins of Amarillo, Texas, won his eighth career title and second of the 2009-10 season in the Don Johnson Eliminator final surviving a 10th-frame error to edge home-state favorite Brian Kretzer of Dayton, Ohio, 206-195, in the championship match.

The Ricart Ford Open is one of four Tour events that will be streamed live on pba.com’s Xtra Frame, which complements the Tour’s coverage on ESPN for the 2011-12 season.  Xtra Frame subscription information is available by visiting pba.com.  The event mark’s Ricart Ford’s fourth year of involvement with the tournament and first year as title sponsor. 

PBA Ricart Ford Open Presented by Columbia 300 Schedule

Friday, Feb. 17

Noon – 1 p.m. – A Squad Practice

2 p.m. – 3 p.m. – B Squad Practice

Pro-ams: 4 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 18

9 a.m. - A Squad Qualifying (9 Games)

4 p.m. – B Squad Qualifying (9 Games)

*Cut to top 24

Sunday, Feb. 19

9 a.m. – Match Play Round 1 (6 Games)

1:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. – Match Play Round 2 (7 Games)

*Cut to top four for Xtra Frame finals

6 p.m. – Xtra Frame Stepladder Finals
About the PBA

The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is an organization of more than 3,800 of the best bowlers from 13 countries who compete in PBA Tour, Regional and Senior Tour events. Nearly one million ESPN viewers watch PBA Tour on Sundays during the tour season and thousands watch PBA activities online by using PBA’s video streaming service, Xtra Frame. PBA sponsors include Bayer, Brunswick, Budweiser, GEICO, Alka-Selzer Plus, Pepsi-Cola and the United States Bowling Congress, among others. For more information, log on to www.pba.com or contact Tim Voss at Sequoia Lanes & The VolleyPark at tvoss@sequoiaprobowl.com.

Last week, the Greater Columbus Sports Commission had the chance to be at the press conference  where the Columbus Marathon made a big announcement that it would now be named after its title beneficiary and called the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus Marathon and 1/2 Marathon in honor of patients of Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

It’s been a great two months for the Marathon as they go into their 33^rd year.  In addition to their recent announcement, in December, the marathon released the results of a study by the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University that shows the 2011 event’s economic impact totaled more than $13 million and $154 million since its inception in 1980.  The four categories measured were: participant and guest expenditures, vendor expenditures, marathon event budget and economic benefit of increased fitness levels.

Registration is now open for the 2012 Marathon, which will be held on October 21. Did you know that for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus Marathon that:

• Nationwide has been partner of the Columbus Marathon from the beginning
• Runners World magazine ranked the Columbus Marathon as one of the top 20 marathons in the country (out of more than 400 marathons)
• USA Today ranked the Columbus Marathon as one of the Top 10 fall marathons
• The Columbus Marathon is in the top 10 marathon events for the number of Boston Marathon qualifiers it produces and is the number one Boston Marathon feeder in Ohio.
• More than 17,000 runners participated in the 2011 run.
• Four host hotels sellout a total of about 1,000 hotel room nights that weekend.

Columbus continues to be a leading sports destination, in part because of its racing community, with two signature running events with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus Marathon and the Cap City Half Marathon along a new triathalon with the Giant Eagle MultiSport Festival last year.