Alden “Andy” Anderson’s interest in the sport of bowling started when he joined the Air Force at age 17, participating in his first league at 18. Bowling was an integral part of his 21˝-year military career, where he served as a league president and secretary-treasurer, captained the 1979 Ellsworth AFB base championship team and was the secretary for the Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota Bowling Association from 1977-1979.
Andy’s final Air Force assignment was to the Pentagon, which brought him to this area in July 1980. He was responsible for running the Saturday youth program at Rinaldi’s Shirley Park in Arlington, where his own three children learned to bowl. When he and his family moved from Arlington to Falls Church in early 1983, his children began bowling at Bowl America Falls Church, where he was a coach for the youth Senior League from 1983-1990.
At Falls Church, he has been the league secretary for the Tuesday Mixed Nuts and the Friday Late Sparetimers leagues and served as president of the Club 55 League. In 1985, Andy was elected secretary for the Falls Church Commercial League, a position he still holds today. He prepares an eight-page weekly standing sheet from a computer bowling program he wrote and posts the standing sheets on BOWL.com. At the end of each league season, he publishes an end-of-year summary of over 20 pages for the Commercial League, which includes 30 years of records and league history. It has appeared onncausbca.org for the past several years.
Andy has sponsored several local bowlers in their quest for bowling professionally on the national level, including fellow Hall of Famers Rich Wolfe and Lisa Rand.
He was a director on the Nation’s Capital Area Bowling Association board for several years in the mid-1990s. He served on the Technology Committee and was responsible for posting all Championship Tournament scores bowled at the end of each day so that the most up-to-date information was available for the participants. Andy served as lane director for Falls Church, which included representing the association at center jamborees, presenting awards, and collecting donations for the BVL Fund.
Before the creation of USBC, Andy played a major role in converting the former WDCAWBA’s computer system to the new WinLABS software. This included converting the data from the previous system, setting up the local awards program profiles in the system, working with the WinLABS project team in Wisconsin to resolve software problems, and recommending improvements in the initial WinLABS functionality that were later implemented in future software releases. He wrote a computer routine that took an output file from WinLABS and converted it to a list of men’s and women’s high scores in a format that was compatible for publication in BOWL Magazine (for which also he has authored two articles). Andy continued to provide this report to the publication through 2008.
His work took him out of the area for several years, and he was unable to continue to serve on the association board. However, when in town he was the first to volunteer many hours assisting the local associations, in processing sanctions and awards.
As he approached age 60, Andy joined the Professional Bowlers Association. Over the past six years, he has enjoyed bowling in both regional and national senior tournaments, cashing in 10 of them.
He has bowled in 30 consecutive ABC/USBC Championship Tournaments. He has four certified perfect games and a high average of 219. His top series is 825, which included 27 consecutive strikes and games of 258, 300, and 267.
Alden “Andy” Anderson has volunteered many hours and provided expert technicaladvice to the local associations over the past 18-plus years and continues to do so today. He is an excellent addition to the NCAUSBCA Hall of Fame.