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The nationwide coronavirus crisis can’t end soon enough for two area men who just made a major investment in a business.
Joe Zokal and Eric Acuncius worked for years to own a bowling and entertainment center, and then the government shut down bowling alleys statewide less than a week after they completed their purchase of Illinois Valley Super Bowl.
“We’d only been in business five days. We were just getting started,” Zokal said this morning.
The two were told they had to close this week, shutting down leagues at the height of the season. The closing also idled the pro shop, bar, kitchen, game room and Saturday comedy nights and forced them to send most employees home until further notice. They still have a full-time employee and have spent the down time cleaning the facility and doing some painting and rearranging. They will owe on their loan for the purchase while not receiving revenue for a while.
“Some of the stuff we would have done in the summer, we’re trying to do now,” Zokal said. But there’s not that much they need to do, since previous owners Jim and Bob Stubler “took very good care of the place.”
The two new owners are losing business, but won’t lose their passion for bowling and the entertainment business.
Zokal and Acuncius both have been avid bowlers for many decades. Both have coached bowling teams and bowled professionally, and both have worked or simply helped out at the Super Bowl in Peru for many years. Acuncius bowled professionally in regional tournaments and circuits for about seven years. His highest finish was 10th at a regional tournament in Madison, Wis., almost 20 years ago.
Zokal — who has rolled perfect 300 games 85 times — has served for several years as an assistant coach for the La Salle-Peru Township High School teams. He previously wrote a bowling column for the NewsTribune (where he’s employed full-time as pre-press manager) and bowled professionally for eight years, finishing 16th in points in the Midwest region one of those years.
Neither intends to quit their day job, and both plan to make sure one of them is there as often as possible.
Q&A
Prior to the nationwide closings of gathering places in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, Zokal and Acuncius sat for an interview with the NewsTribune.
What made you interested in trying this?
Acuncius: “It was always an ambition of mine to run a bowling center or even own a bowling center. My first job was here 32 years ago when this place opened up. I’ve worked here off and on for probably 15, 16 years. I have a love and passion for the game of bowling. I coach it for high school; I coach it for junior high. I’ve been bowling since I was 8, which is 39 years now. It’s always something I’ve done; it’s always something I’ve wanted to do, from going pro when I was younger.”
He serves as an assistant coach for St. Bede Academy and has coached for three years for Trinity Catholic in La Salle.
“High school bowling has gotten bigger across the state, and now grade school bowling is getting bigger, and that’s good for the sport.”
How did you get interested in bowling, and super bowl?
Zokal: “I’ve loved bowling since I started and I didn’t start ‘’til they opened. If Bob Stubler wouldn’t have come and asked me if I ever bowled in a league before, I don’t know if I ever would have. I was just having fun bowling when they had open bowling.”
“I was 20 and I was in a league when I was 21. I used to through a back-up ball, which is right-handed but the wrong way. I was not good at all. It took me about 10 years to get good; that’s when I met Eric. We started bowling together and I started getting better.
“To me bowling is like the rest of my family.”
Acuncius: It’s something you can do the rest of your life
Zokal: “It’s the one sport you can do no matter what age you are. I just love bowling and the people and helping people. It’s a lot of fun.”
DID YOU HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT TAKING THIS ON?
Zokal: “It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s something we love to do. When I’m working here, it doesn’t feel like work. I enjoy the people and all the friends, all the families it brings together. The Stublers did a great job of making it up to this. They started it and built it up to this and hopefully we can build it up and make it better.”
HOW HAS THE SUPER BOWL GROWN?
Zokal: “They started with 16 (lanes) and then they added eight more lanes to it … We have a league that’s 18 lanes, so the house is almost full. It started with the 16 lanes and the bar.”
Acuncius: “They used to have, when they started, double-shifts. They had leagues that started at 6:30, they had leagues that started at 9:30. When they went to 24 lanes, they were able to cut (leagues) down so they didn’t have people bowling until 12:30 or 1 o’clock.”
The Stublers turned lane No. 1 into present-day lane No. 9 and built on a larger pro shop and a game room including skee ball and other larger amusement games where players can win redemptions and prizes.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THE STUBLERS?
Acuncius: “Work ethic. Just knowing how to treat people and making sure you’re taking care of the customers … Working for them I learned a lot about working behind the counter; and it’s a lot of other things to running the business …. It’s about taking care of everything at one time. We have a lot of things going on right here, So you have a lot of stuff thrown at you at one time. We have a game room going on here; you might have comedy club going on, you have a bar (business). Some nights you have league going on, or parties, We have kids tournaments here; we have adult leagues going on here.
“It’s a family entertainment center.”
Can you talk about the comedy nights?
Zokal: “Actually, Super Bowl is the longest-running one-night comedy place in the country. … A lot of clubs might have comedy three or four nights a week, we do Saturday nights from September to April. They’ve been doing it for 27 or 28 years now. There was a full show last week and there are some big shows coming up.”
what do you want people to know about IV super bowl?
Zokal: “A lot of people, I don’t think they know how much we have to offer. It’s not just a bowling alley — we have the game room, we do have the bar; we’re going to add more sports things to watch in here. We do have comedy, and we run a lot of events and fundraisers. We have a kitchen.”
Will you be able to bowl more or less:
Zokal: “Well I like to bowl but it’s hard to say. Right now I do bowl six days a week; six leagues.” Zokal’s three children are all grown, with the youngest age 23.”
Eric bowls one league and is married with children.
What other plans do you have?
Acuncius: “Nothing’s going to change at first. We’re going to assess things over the summer and try er build it bigger and better and let people know what our future plans are.”
Zokal: “We want people to come out and realize this is a big family hear and come out and have fun.”
Both want to continue to get families and children interested in bowling.
A lot of families don’t know kids, starting at ages as young as 5 or 6, can start amassing scholarship money simply by bowling in tournaments and youth leagues.
Will you look to the Stublers for guidance?
Zokal: “We’ll always have questions and things for them. They have a lot of people they know and they’ve been on state boards, national boards.
Acuncius: They’ve been presidents of a lot of boards They were the ones that got local scholarship tournaments going and revived the high school bowling programs that we have now.”
2020-03-21 19:37:10Z
https://www.mywebtimes.com/2020/03/21/a-passion-for-bowling-and-entertainment/az368hh/
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