Billie Jean King netted another title, but this time it wasn’t in tennis.
King’s New York City WTT KingPins claimed the championship of the inaugural Professional Bowlers Assn. League by defeating the Motown Muscle in the finals of the Elias Cup at Woodland Bowl in Indianapolis.
The culmination of the PBA League's season was aired Sunday on ESPN.
The KingPins won the two-game, total-pins showdown with the Muscle, 440-407, with victories of 202-181 and 238-226.
The Muscle rallied in the first half of the second game to tie the score, but the KingPins finished with seven straight strikes to seal the victory. Anchor man Pete Weber clinched it with a strike in the bottom half of the 10th frame. He needed only a mark to seal the win.
King, a Long Beach native who attended Cal State University, Los Angeles, was on the KingPins’ bench during her team's games cheering for her team.
“I was so happy I could be here in person,” she said.
King’s team included Weber, Tommy Jones, Jack Jurek, John Szczerbinski, Scott Norton and supplemental draft pick Kelly Kulick.
Kulick, the only woman selected among the league’s eight teams, came in to bowl two shots after Weber sealed the victory. Kulick, who was sitting on the bench next to King for the KingPins' two games, came in cold and drilled two strikes to finish the game.
PBA reporter Bill Vint quoted King as saying: “I was so calm playing tennis, but I was not so calm watching today. I was dying. The match was so close. I loved my team right from the start. I watched them on ESPN; I even watched one match on a JetBlue flight, but I could tell they worked together great. . . .
“I love it; it’s exactly what I believe in. If you watch a World Team Tennis match, you’ll see my philosophy on life; it’s men and woman working together, because we’re in this world together and we have to help each other.”
King won 39 grand slam events, including 20 Wimbledon titles.
In the day’s first match, Terrell Owens’ Dallas Strikers defeated the BROOKLYN STyLES, 217-172. The Muscle then eliminated the Strikers, 216-190, to reach the finals.
The Los Angeles X and Silver Lake (Calif.) Atom Splitters were among four teams that failed to advance to the Elias Cup finals.
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