Orange Tenpin Bowl hosts Tenpin Bowling Australia Inclusion Event

With quality service and terrific facilities, all the place needs is a successful name that's attached to the complex - and they have that in Jason Belmonte.

With all that considered, Orange Tenpin Bowl was the perfect place to recently hold a major Inclusion Event for Tenpin Bowling Australia and national education and high performance manager, Mike Griffith was defiant in explaining why he chose it.

"It's the home of Belmo (Jason Belmonte)," he said when asked why Orange was chosen.

"It's all about the venue, location being central New South Wales and trying to incorporate regional New South Wales into the sport."

The Inclusion Event brought a number of athletes to the town, bowling 18 games, with three rounds of six games each.

Split into four classifications of intellectual disability, wheelchair, hearing and vision impaired athletes, it was the first time running the event and provided Para World Cup stakeholders with a look at potential athletes.

"We're in the process of creating national training squad for inclusion athletes ... we're trying to identify and select our training squad for the Australian hosted International Bowling Federation (IBF) Para World Cup," Griffith said.

Competitors throughout the day ranged from locals to visitors from Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Coolangatta.

With the Para World Cup to be held in early November, Griffith added there's been a significant rise in disabled athletes competing in tenpin bowling.

"It's very large in the sport - we had a lot of bowling opportunities for inclusion athletes across Australia for many years but nothing beyond that," he said.

"In the last couple of years, the IBF has introduced the Para games and World Cup, so now there's an opportunity to create and have a team representing Australia and going overseas.

"Just like we've had a natural training squad for able bodied athletes ... it's now time for Tenpin Australia to offer that to inclusion athletes, opening up the door for pathways, and representing their country overseas."

With inclusion events in their early stages, Griffith added he hopes to see more competitors join in over the following years.

"Thanks to Aldo and Marissa (Belmonte) for hosting the event, it's an inaugural event and hopefully it becomes bigger and better and attended by more people," he said.