Ryan Clemons
General Manager
IMU Bowling and Billiards
Since 2012, Ryan Clemons has been the manager of the Indiana Memorial Union Bowling and Billiards, focusing on creating a welcoming and entertaining atmosphere. Ryan directs student management and staff to effectively run the bowling alleys and ensures safe operations for Bloomingtonians who love the bowling center.
He was selected in 2015 to receive the ACUI Bob Rodda New Professional Award for revitalizing the recreation center. In 2018, he became an adjunct professor, teaching bowling courses for the School of Public Health. He has also taught with Lifelong Learning and Healthy IU, recently adding table tennis and billiards to his array of offerings.
Q: What initially sparked your love for bowling, and when did you realize you could parlay it into a career? Any favorite childhood memories at the bowling alley?
A: That’s an interesting question for me. I was never a good bowler as a child. I did bowl league as a kid two different times: once was in a summer youth league, and the other was your typical winter youth program. I was very young, and my mom was sticking me in bowling as something to do. I also had a couple friends who were already doing bowling, so I was essentially joining to be with them.
I got into this field, in a way, out of necessity. I needed to drop out of high school to pay the bills, so I got a GED and started working in a mechanic shop. I did that for a couple years but didn’t see a future in that industry. By chance, one of my ex-girlfriend's fathers was a traveling mechanic who ran around 50 centers throughout central Illinois. He was revamping lanes and needed a physical laborer, which ended up leading to a multiyear mechanical apprenticeship. That’s where I found passion, because when you’re working in small centers, you work one-on-one with independent proprietors. Without the politics of working a full-time job or any bowling center, you got to show up, fix their problems, make them happy, and then take off and do the same thing again the next day at a different place. That sense of being able to make someone else happy and then know that it was going to help the proprietor was fulfilling for me.
Q: What are some valuable lessons we can all take from bowling?
A: Find something you love to do, do it with people you enjoy spending time with, and don’t stop! With seniors, a lot of times it was their only physical activity they were getting or their only time to socialize with people outside of their home. It’s important to find a sense of belonging with people who have a shared interest.
This was especially prominent during the pandemic. We were one of the only physical activity courses that kept going on the fall of 2021, the first semester back from lockdown. When I talked to some of the students who had participated in those courses, they told me it was literally the only thing that got them out of their residence. They didn’t have another reason to believe, and everybody was trying to do their best during the pandemic. People weren’t leaving their houses if they didn’t need to, and bowling was the one thing that got them out and talking to people who weren’t their roommates.
Not only was bowling helping people’s mental health and brings them connections, but it was giving them some kind of physical activity, and I’ve really tried to incorporate that into our mission statement post-COVID. We’ve worked to do things from a standpoint of thinking about how we can positively impact physical and mental health.
Q: Bowling & Billiards provides guidance and leadership opportunities to IU students. Do you have any rewarding moments as the B&B manager working with students?
A: Prior to the COVID shutdown, we always had a full-time assistant manager. They left during the early pandemic, and coming out of it, I opted not to rehire the position. I had always thought about students being the leaders and not having full-time employees doing the bulk of the work, so it gave me an opportunity. After the pandemic, we only had two remaining student staff members, and one of them ended up being our first assistant manager. We added two more assistant managers shortly thereafter from people who we had hired for the summer. By the start of the spring 2021 semester, we had three assistant managers and an overseer of administration, marketing, and reservations.
It was rewarding to see their growth and to watch them go from being taught to teaching young teams themselves. This all culminated into last November—we went on a leadership retreat down to Atlanta, Georgia to the ACY regional conference. We gave a presentation on crafting identity through change and started by describing the revitalization of the recreation center. We discussed how we formed the identity of the center through the changes the pandemic brought, and each of the three managers talked about how their work here crafted part of their identity coming out of the pandemic. Having the recreation center be the first place they started to make new friends and connections at and just hearing their own words on how this job had impacted them was a touching moment for me.
Q: What are some things people may not know about the B&B at the IMU?
A: First, the concept of a college union at IUB originated in Billiards Hall, which was originally in the student center. At the time, it was an old, smoky room for men only, and that was where the idea of needing a space for students to be able to organize and gather came from. Since the founding of this building, there has been a Billiards Hall here, originally where the Dean of Students Office is now. During renovations, it moved across the hall, and its current room was once the trophy room for campus before everything moved to Assembly Hall. We’ve had bowling here since 1957, and we still use the original bowling pinsetter equipment and lanes that were installed. However, a lot of equipment around it, like the scoring, has been upgraded to reflect modern times.
Table tennis is our newest addition that we recently added. Our students handle the machines in the back as factory-based machines—eventually, something gets stuck, and the students are great at going back there, shutting down the machine, and getting it back up and running. Anything that happens above that base level usually requires me, but we have a few students who can handle it.
If you broke down my time over the course of the entire year, I probably spend about fifty percent of my 40 weekly hours back with the machines. It varies throughout the year, so through the school year, I’m up in the front more, and then the entire summer, I spend my time inside the machines getting them prepped and ready to go for the upcoming school year. I do most of both regular upkeep and major projects. Some students and I installed the pop-up bumper gutters that are out there. Just last summer, we went to Bedford and tore some pin decks, which is what the pins sit on. Ours are from the early ‘80s and worn down at this point, so I help us stay financially viable by involving myself in as many projects as possible. I’m lucky to have the experience of ten years working in around forty to fifty different centers doing installation and regular maintenance.
Q: Any upcoming events/discounts/opportunities you’d like faculty and staff to know about?
A: A couple of things! We run Hoosier Happy Hour every Monday through Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. We open for recreation in the evenings through the week at 6 p.m., and that first hour is $2 bowling, $2 bowling shoes, and fifty percent off Billiards play. One of the discounts that the community takes advantage of the most is BOGO on Sundays, so you'll get a free second game after your first game and shoes. One that students love is Retro Nights, and we do that in coordination with First Thursdays. We offer 50 cent games from 6 to 7 on Thursdays.
Our biggest annual promotion is Kids Bowl Free, and that’s a program that I brought here the first or second year working here. Kids aged 16 and under can sign up and receive two free games every day in June and July when we’re open. It really builds a bridge between us and the local community, and it also helps them come back during the winter, so it supports our ability to provide for students, too.
