Holiday Invitational Tournament (HIT)

The Holiday Invitational Tournament (HIT) was an LGBTQ bowling tournament held annually in Milwaukee over Thanksgiving weekend. What began as a small local tournament in 1979 grew into a major gathering for LGBTQ bowlers from across the United States and Canada and helped build a network of LGBTQ bowling leagues and tournaments that extended far beyond Milwaukee.

But HIT was about more than bowling. From its beginning, the tournament offered something that many LGBTQ people desperately needed in the late 1970s: a place to belong during Thanksgiving.

The history of gay bowling

Milwaukee's LGBTQ bowling community was already well established before HIT. The city's first league was the Sunday Mixed Handicap League, formed in 1974 by Ken Kurtz, then manager of the Finale bar, and staff members of the Beer Garden, a women's bar. The league consisted of eight five-person teams, with approximately two-thirds men and one-third women. Teams bowled on alternating Sundays at Pinky's Bowl (2718 S. 27th St.) in Milwaukee.

In 1976, the Monday Night Irregulars was established for bowlers who wanted to participate in a weekly league. Additional leagues followed, including a second Sunday night league and a Friday night league. The Friday league began as a scratch league, later switched to handicap competition, and eventually folded.

In 1985, the Wednesday Goodtime Bowling League was established. It had eight five-person teams, with women accounting for approximately 25 percent of its bowlers. Milwaukee also hosted a spring league for several years as a fundraiser for HIT. With the exception of the original Sunday Mixed Handicap League, these leagues bowled at Landmark Lanes, which became Milwaukee's regular bowling house.

The birth of HIT

In 1978, David Theiss, Ken Kurtz, Dick Krekowski, and Carol Pecor met at David's home to discuss the possibility of organizing a national LGBTQ bowling tournament.

There was an immediate practical question: Where were the bowling leagues in other cities, and how could Milwaukee's organizers reach them?

They reached out to their networks, identified bowling leagues in other cities, and started planting the idea of a Milwaukee-based bowling tournament. 

The result was the Holiday Invitational Tournament.

On November 22, 1979, a “logical family” of Milwaukee bowling fans came together to host the first HIT over Thanksgiving weekend. Their goal was to create a meaningful, memorable, and welcoming event—particularly for people who might otherwise have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.

A family of choice

In 1979, family rejection was a reality for many LGBTQ people. Returning home for Thanksgiving could mean facing hostility, hiding who they were, or simply not being welcome at the family table. For those who stayed in Milwaukee, alternatives might include a quiet dinner at home or gathering with friends at a bar.

Milwaukee's LGBTQ bars often became community gathering places during the holiday, with some owners serving full Thanksgiving dinners to their customers. But HIT offered something different: an opportunity to leave town, meet other LGBTQ people, compete, socialize, and celebrate Thanksgiving as part of a larger community.

“Having something to look forward to, a place to go, to talk openly, to not have to keep your mouth shut, on Thanksgiving?” recalled one project contributor. “People said this is too good to be true.”

The tournament quickly became a place where people could form connections and build what many LGBTQ people understood as a family of choice.

“People came together in a really big way at HIT,” the contributor recalled. “It meant so much, to so many, for so long.”

From Milwaukee to the nation

The first tournament in 1979 was small and locally attended, with no out-of-town participants. In a 1988 history written for HIT's 10th anniversary, Timm “Laverne” Short, then HIT Statistics Chairperson, and Bob Gliniecki, then HIT Director, reflected that the first year gave Milwaukee's organizers valuable experience before they began welcoming visitors from elsewhere.

The second tournament, held in 1980, brought bowlers to Milwaukee from Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, Houston, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. According to Short and Gliniecki, those cities returned in subsequent years, and many eventually developed their own LGBTQ bowling tournaments. 

HIT was now the nation's first national gay bowling tournament. The event raised tens of thousands for community causes, welcomed visitors from all over the world, and inspired over 30 copycat tournaments. HIT also fostered the creation of the International Gay Bowling Organization (IGBO.) 

HIT's organizers saw the tournament as part of a much larger movement. Milwaukee eventually hosted three IGBO Midyear Meetings as the tournament rotated between host cities. As LGBTQ communities across North America became familiar with the organization, the sport of bowling became more and more popular, and the national bowling community grew stronger together. 

Over the following decades, HIT became one of Milwaukee's major annual LGBTQ events and anchored Milwaukee as the LGBTQ bowling capital of America.

When Thanksgiving changed

By 2016, HIT was facing a very different challenge.

Attendance had begun to decline, while sponsorships and donations were becoming more difficult to secure. Organizers also faced serious questions about the tournament's future leadership. Many longtime volunteers were aging, while fewer people were stepping forward to assume leadership roles.

But there was another, more unexpected reason HIT was losing some of its audience: Thanksgiving itself had changed.

When HIT was founded, many LGBTQ people could not safely or comfortably return home for the holiday. Four decades later, more LGBTQ people were being welcomed back to their family Thanksgiving tables—with their spouses or partners, children, and other loved ones.

The tournament that had once provided an alternative to family Thanksgiving now had to compete with it.

For many people, that was a sign of extraordinary social change. The need that had helped give birth to HIT had diminished because more LGBTQ people could spend Thanksgiving with their families.

But that progress also created an ironic problem for an organization whose identity was built around bringing people together over the holiday.

HIT no more

HIT's organizers ultimately concluded that they could not sustain the tournament without new leadership and resources.

On May 1, 2019, organizers announced on Facebook that the Holiday Invitational Tournament would end after 40 years.

“It is with great sadness that we make this last posting to inform you all of the decision to no longer continue the Holiday Invitational Tournament. The 40 years of HIT has certainly seen its years of highs and lows and we feel that the time has come to let our tournament end.”

The announcement marked the end of one of Milwaukee's longest-running LGBTQ sporting traditions and one of the country's earliest LGBTQ bowling tournaments.

The end of HIT received relatively little attention, and some longtime participants were unaware that the tournament had ended. 

For 40 years, Thanksgiving weekend in Milwaukee meant HIT.  For four decades, HIT connected LGBTQ bowlers across cities and generations. It helped foster the development of an international bowling network, raised money for community causes, and provided thousands of people with a place to gather during Thanksgiving.

Most importantly, it created a family.

In 1979, that family offered a refuge to people who might otherwise have spent Thanksgiving alone. By 2019, the world had changed enough that many of those same people -- and the generations that followed them -- could celebrate the holiday with families who welcomed them home.