We're sure this comes as no surprise to anyone, but since the extension of the local stay-at-home order means we'd have to roll until at least mid-July to finish the season — and that's assuming bowling alleys are even in the first wave of businesses able to re-open (unlikely) — we are just going to go ahead and call the rest of this season off. At least we are making a clean break at the "midpoint" of the season so everybody got to bowl against each other once.

Sadly, until COVID-19 is no longer a threat, we will have to ask bowlers to stopping licking their balls.

For those of you who paid ahead, we will be issuing refunds as soon as we receive VMLY&R's contribution for the 8 weeks its members bowled and a refund from AMF. (The processes for both of these have been initiated.) For those of you getting refunds, when your money is ready we will contact you to make arrangements. (We'd appreciate it any of you without a Venmo account get one as that is the easiest contact-free way to distribute the refunds.) It will probably be about 2 weeks before we will be able to start issuing refunds.

There are a handful of you who still owe a little bit for the 8 weeks we did get to bowl. If you are currently out of work / facing financial hardship, don't worry about it, there are some of paid-ahead bowlers who have kindly offered up their refunds to help out if need be. But if you have not been financially impacted, please go to the online payment portal and pay ONLY what is listed as "Current Amount Due" by the end of this week so we can minimize what needs to be covered by those donors.

Though we aren't going to officially have any prizes this season, we WOULD like for everyone to vote for the People's Choice awards anyway at http://www.gutteralley.com/voting/ so at least people can get some recognition in those categories. After all, we had 6 rookies who won't ever be rookies again and they deserve their shot at Rookie of the Season.

KLEAN BAWLZ!!1, since you did at least bowl against every other team, you can go ahead and think of yourselves as asterisk champions if that’s what you need to do to make yourselves feel better. Just be advised that we are going to asterisk the hell out of it on the web site https://www.loftypm.com/ when it gets updated with the People's Choice results on May 1.

So, apart from that, the plan is to continue the break and regroup for the Fall 2020 season if the 'rona situation over the summer makes it look allowable. If you have an idea already of whether or now you'd like to bowl this fall, go ahead and let us know now. Otherwise we will get in touch with you sometime in June.

Stay safe, wash your hands, don't touch your face, and don't stick your fingers in any unfamiliar ball holes. We hope to see you sometime around the end of August!