Ballselector.com

I still remember sitting in my buddy Chuck's Pro-Shop in Wisconsin with every manufacturer's ball catalog open in front of me, looking for a couple of balls with a different reaction for my bag

I had books all over the place, sheets falling out, and a pad of paper with cryptic notes and page numbers scribbled on it. I was thinking to myself, there MUST be a better way.

Being a programmer by profession, I went home and spent a week extracting all the ball information from the manufacturer websites, and put it in an excel spreadsheet, this way I could just sort them by RG and Differentials, and find what I was looking for quicker.

That little spreadsheet became quite a hit, friends at the pro-shop were soon looking at it to find equipment for themselves.

My next step was to just put it online, so they could do their research at home and stop congregating around the shop, so I bought a simple website template for $20, and began programming the whole site around it. Ironically, that same template was used for the next 7 years.

Little did i know, that would be the start of one of the most popular bowling websites on the internet, and that over the next seven years it would grow to be used by over 90,000 people with all skill levels from beginner to advanced.

Over the years, there have been several other websites (mostly pay-sites), that have tried to copy us and failed, most are long gone and the rest are nothing more than facades for selling raw data from the balls' spec list. Ballselector is not like other bowling websites that try to mimic popular sites like Facebook, MySpace or to provide you with bowling news from other sources, this is a very serious technical site. If you are here reading this, then you are in the market to add equipment to your bag and your looking for guidance before you drop $200+ on a ball.

Ballselector will always be free, and there are many new additions with this first major upgrade in seven years.

The first part of the upgrade had to be made because of the bowling ball technologies changing so much over the years, some of the characteristics we were using for comparisons are really no longer appropriate.

We no longer track coverstocks, just the aggressiveness of them. It really doesn't matter if a coverstock is made from some super new resin, all we care about is how strong it is in comparison to other balls.

Same with the cores, the manufacturers have made so many advances in cores, it would confuse even the best of us, so we have just made it the shape of the backend reaction.

The other major change is the addition of the IPhone/ITouch app (Pending apple approval at this time). Now you can take Ballselector with you to the proshop, read reviews, compare balls and do all the same relational comparisons that you can do on the site. Click on the top banner to go to ITunes and download it.

I have also added youTube Videos, manufacturer drill sheets, and manufacturer ad sheets

The final new feature is the addition of more detailed ball reviews, several of the manufacturers were kind enough to send in balls for reviews. Please keep that in mind when looking for your next ball, support from bowlers and the bowling community help make this site one of the best resources for bowling equipment on the internet. We are trying to get the reviews done as soon as possible.

One last note, when you do purchase a new ball, please remember to come back to the site and add it to your profile and most importantly, WRITE THE REVIEW!

Thank you for your support over the years, and if you have any questions, or would like to volunteer some time in keeping the site up to date, feel free to contact me through the contact us form.

-- Karl Ramonas