<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2nEfMB_0vjwBiPy00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2nEfMB_0vjwBiPy00" width="1800" height="1187" ><figcaption>Photo by Austen Neaton Joey, Emily, Alicia, and Joe Swartzer smile together while standing amongst their bowling lanes at the Hollywood Sports Complex in front of a sign commemorating the 50th anniversary of bowling at the facility. The family owns and operates the complex together, and Joe said he is happy to carry on the strong legacy of bowling started by HSC founder Mac McKittrick in 1974.</figcaption></figure>Over the past 50 years, people have come from near and far to gather at the Hollywood Sports Complex, located in Hollywood Township, to have some drinks and partake in a sport that has been around since ancient times: bowling.Though the complex is built to accommodate several sports, bowling has stood above the rest as the establishment’s calling card for the past five decades. HSC owner Joe Swartzer is proud to continue carrying on the legacy it has created.Swartzer has owned and operated the sports complex since 1996, though he initially co-owned it alongside Kevin Butcher.Swartzer took sole ownership of the HSC in 2003.Today, he runs the establishment with the help of his wife, Katie, and his six children.The three oldest children, Alicia, Emily, and Joey, have helped out at the HSC since they were young, and each continues to work there either full or part-time. The three youngest children, Kortney, Nicholas, and Michael, are still in school, so they help out where they can.Joe purchased the complex after having worked there as a bartender several years earlier, and he said he wanted to own it because of the fun atmosphere it had.“It was all about the people and the fun they had there,” he said.When he acquired the HSC, it needed some sprucing up, and over the past three decades, he has renovated practically every square inch of the building.“Thirty years of ownership can do a lot for anything; if I had only been in it for a two to five-year gig, I probably wouldn’t have tried so hard to make it what it is today,” he said.Some of the renovations include several interior updates, an outdoor deck and expanded patio, an outdoor kitchen and bar, and new lighting and scoreboards for the softball fields.Joe also introduced new screens and equipment for the bowling lanes, including state-of-the-art lane machines.“It’s been a constant effort to push this place into the future,” Joe said.Over time, Joe’s mechanic at the complex, Bill Pierson, recommended to him that they consider catering events.Joe ultimately decided to add catering to his business model after an act of happenstance showed him how lucrative it could be.The first event he catered at was his sister’s wedding, and there he received numerous requests from others who wanted him to cater and bartend their weddings. Through word-of-mouth advertising at each subsequent event, it continued to grow larger.Today, Joe and his family are constantly catering events in the area. One of the biggest events they cater for is the annual Winstock Country Music Festival in Winsted, which welcomes thousands of people from far and wide each year.<h2>Bring on the bowling </h2>The Hollywood Sports Complex can accommodate four sports, and it has leagues for each. They include volleyball, softball, billiards, and bowling.While the first three are all quite popular amongst people living in the area, Joe believes that bowling has made the HSC what it is today.“In all honesty, none of this would have happened if the bowling alley wasn’t here,” Joe said.The sport was the first to be played at the complex, and it arrived there in 1974 thanks to the founder of the HSC, Mac McKittrick.McKittrick owned the bowling alley that once sat in Watertown, and after a dispute regarding a liquor license with the Watertown City Council, he opted to move his four-lane bowling unit to the complex, which at the time was known as the Hollywood Store.The building had once been a grocery store, and McKittrick chose the location because it had a functioning bar. He also liked that it was in a central location between several nearby cities, as he felt it could draw in people from each.The original facility did not have room for his lanes, though, so he built the section that still houses those same bowling lanes today. He also added two additional lanes.The first bowling season at the complex took place later that year.McKittrick eventually created a strong foundation of avid bowlers, and the HSC hosted countless leagues each week for men, women, couples, and juniors.After some time, ownership of the HSC was transferred to Fred and Beth Butcher, who owned it for several years before their grandson, Kevin, and Joe took it over in the mid-1990s.At that time, bowling was still immensely popular, and in the coming years the HSC would hit its bowling peak.In 2001, the American Bowling Congress (ABC), the national governing body for local bowling associations, identified the HSC and the Hollywood Bowling Association (HBA) as having the highest ABC membership on a per-lane average of any association in the country.That year, the HBA had 344 members, and with just six lanes in the bowling alley, the HSC averaged 57.3 members per lane for the 1999-2000 bowling season.Non-league members were hard-pressed to find a lane to bowl on, and they would often sub in for league members to secure a spot to play.By the time Joe took sole ownership of the complex in 2003, the popularity of bowling had began declining before eventually falling hard during the 2008 economic recession. When money became tight for families, extracurricular activities like bowling were the first things to get cut from the family budget.“The whole industry took a hit – it wasn’t just Hollywood,” Joe said. “It took a lot to try to get it to bounce back, but there was just only so much that you could do.”“I was always trying and never giving up, but you couldn’t take it to heart that the leagues weren’t what they used to be,” he continued. “You can’t beat yourself up over something that you really don’t have much control over.”The sport began to regain some popularity throughout the 2010s, and at times, the bowling alley was nearly as busy as it once had been. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought any progress that the sport had made to a screeching halt.Since it ended, the complex has been rebuilding its leagues, which never went away entirely.Today, the HSC has one of the only bowling alleys in the greater area, as many have closed in recent years.It also has a good group of bowlers who compete in nine total leagues. This includes its junior bowling league which competes every Saturday. Joe said the league’s popularity is a good sign for the future of the sport at the HSC because young people need to grow up wanting to bowl.Bowling has played an important role not only in Joe’s life but also in the lives of his kids, who each grew up as avid bowlers. The three oldest also hope to take over the complex when Joe decides to retire one day.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=21XTNm_0vjwBiPy00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=21XTNm_0vjwBiPy00" width="1800" height="1129" ><figcaption>Photo by Austen Neaton The Hollywood Sports Complex is located in Hollywood Township, and it is built to accommodate volleyball, softball, billiards, and bowling. However, Joe Swartzer believes bowling has made the establishment what it is today.</figcaption></figure><h2>Family affair </h2>Joe said his favorite part about owning the HSC for so many years has been running it alongside his family, and his children feel the same way.“I know some businesses take a turn when they’re family-run, but I feel like we all work really well together,” Emily said. “We have a really good dynamic; everyone already knows their place, and everyone knows what they’re best at, so we all just kind of show up and go where we need to.”Though each helps out by bartending and assisting with catering, they also have their specific roles.Emily currently works full-time at the HSC and handles the HSC’s website and social media, amongst other duties. Joey also works there full-time and handles the mowing and maintenance around the complex.Alicia cooks part-time and helps out with just about everything as needed. Katie also helps as needed, though she has a full-time job at Millerbernd Manufacturing in Winsted.While the youngest three siblings do help out at the complex, it’s the older three who have practically worked there full-time since they were young.Joe jokes that none of his family members had a say as to whether or not they’d work there.“My wife married into it,” he said with a laugh. “As for the kids, I don’t think they really had a choice in the matter.”While he has always been happy to have his kids as helping hands at his facility, his favorite part of having them along is the fact that he gets to spend time with them.“If I was watching them and I was here at the complex, then they were here too, and when they got old enough they started helping me out,” Joe said. “It started as them coloring me a picture, and all of a sudden, they’re counting cheese curds and cooking food. I get to spend all this time with them, and though I may tell them what to do, we can still hang out and just do random stuff and have some good laughs,” he continued. “I was a farm kid and the old man was the same way; he’d boss me around, sure, but he enjoyed having me with him.”His children are just as happy to have grown up with their father in their daily lives and are thankful for the work ethic it instilled in them.Though Joe and his children love spending time with one another, they also like that they can get to know the regulars at the complex. The HSC is a popular spot among locals who hang out at the bar there.“When I’m here I’m really just hanging out with my friends, and even though I’m not physically on the same side of the bar as they are, we are still hanging out together,” Joey said.His father and siblings agreed.Joe said that he has also enjoyed forming relationships with the countless staff members he has had over the years, and that he would not be where he is today without them.“There have been so many people over the years who have helped to make this place what it is, and I consider myself very lucky to have them all as part of the Hollywood Sports Complex family,” he said.The only thing that has ever been close to slowing down the Swartzers was the pandemic, which forced them to shut down the HSC for about a year as the rest of the country did the same.Eventually, they were allowed to provide takeout orders on Fridays, and when they began doing so, they saw just how much support they had from the people in the area. Each Friday, they would get flooded with orders.The family said that they are very thankful for those who supported them during that time and allowed them to stay afloat.Alicia believes that the pandemic also made the regulars realize that the HSC and its place in its community can’t be taken for granted.Once it opened fully again, the bar there was as popular as ever as locals returned to hang out there, particularly those who had turned 21 during the thick of the pandemic and came out to drink for the first time.“We’ve been pretty blessed; right when we reopened we were so used to having no business, so when we started getting a ton of people it was insane, and since then it’s stayed pretty busy,” Joey said.<h2>More than just a bowling alley </h2>Joe believes that the reason the HSC has remained so popular over the years is because it is a destination, rather than another spot to hang out.The location of the complex also makes it a palace that people have to travel to, rather than a spot that they can go to because it’s within walking distance.“When people come here, they’re making a point to come here, and that is why Dad always calls it a destination,” Emily said. “They’re coming here because they want to be here.”Though the sports complex may not be going anywhere anytime soon, its legacy of bowling has taken some hits in recent years as many of the people who first bowled there have since passed away.For many decades, the HSC has served as a hub for oral history to be passed down, whether it be from Joe or those who were bowling there before he had ever worked there.With so many of the individuals who saw the complex at its peak now gone, Joe feels responsible for carrying their stories with him.“So many of those stories are just one generation from being erased, so I think it’s important to keep those stories alive,” Joe said. “When the people who have come here the longest pass away, all you have is those stories.”Editor’s note: This article contains a handful of corrections and updates from the originally published version. The original article incorrectly stated that Joe Swartzer acquired the Hollywood Sports Complex from Mac McKittrick in 1996. He actually acquired it that year alongside Kevin Butcher from Butcher’s grandparents, Fred and Beth Butcher, who had owned the HSC in the several years prior. Swartzer gained sole ownership in 2003.The updated article also includes a quote from Swartzer regarding his Hollywood Sports Complex family that was not in the original piece.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

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The heart of Hollywood Township: celebrating 50 years of bowling at the Hollywood Sports Complex

Over the past 50 years, people have come from near and far to gather at the Hollywood Sports Complex, located in Hollywood Township, to have some drinks and partake in a sport that has been around since ancient times: bowling. Though the complex is built to accommodate several sports, bowling...