Sarah Elliot has spent most of her life at Dale’s Weston Lanes, learning the business alongside her father, Dale Elliot. Now, at the start of 2026, she is taking leadership of the bowling center as Dale retires, marking a new chapter for the family-run business while continuing the day-to-day operations that have made it a fixture in the community for decades.
“I’m very lucky I had someone to take over the business. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity that I do, to have Sarah and a good young staff of people,” Dale Elliot said. “Our big goal is to try to keep bowling in the family and not turn to corporations. We just don’t see the corporation business functioning in our area.”
And Dale Elliot has a good sense of business in the area, having owned and operated the business since 1989 while also serving as president of the Marathon County Tavern League. Elliot first got the ball rolling in his hometown of Merill, when he started a high school job working at Les & Jim’s Lincoln Lanes in 1975.
“I worked there until 1989 when I got contacted by the guys who owned the bowling center here down in Weston, which by the way was out in the middle of nowhere at that time,” Dale said. “We had a farm right next door and cattails in the parking lot.”
Over the years, Weston grew up and developed, making the bowling center a fortunate investment. Dale’s Weston Lanes, originally a 16-lane facility, expanded to meet the area’s needs — and to attract important events.
“At that time you needed to have a 36 to 24 lane center to run state tournaments,” Dale said.
Dale soon acquired an additional 24 lanes, giving the center 40 total lanes. Dale’s Weston Lanes “got a state tournament right away,” Dale said. To capitalize on the increased activity, Dale added a banquet hall and built a hotel next door to the bowling center. Eventually, he added another 20 lanes to accommodate more state tournament events.
“A 60-lane center in Wausau at that time was probably the most idiotic thing to do, but it worked and is still working,” Dale reminisced. “Obviously we have three big state tournaments now.”
Dale’s Weston Lanes regularly hosts all three United States Bowling Congress’ Wisconsin state tournaments (one for men, women and children each) for two years and then take a break every third year. Collectively, the tournaments run from January through April.
“They have the largest state tournaments in the country,” Dale said about the Wisconsin chapter. “The mens runs 19 weekends, the womens runs about 12 and the kids runs about eight or nine. They’re a huge boost to our local economy, that was one of the reasons why we did it. We kept staying on top and making sure we had what they needed.”
What’s more, the Wausau area has an unusually strong and supportive bowling industry that allows for recreational bowlers to still find a lane during the hectic tournament season.
“When we have a state tournament, being able to allow kids to still go and have birthday parties or go bowling at Days and Coral – we’re all in close enough proximity that people don’t have to find something else to do,” Sarah Elliot said. “They can still go bowling. I think that’s a huge thing, that we’re all in a close enough proximity that our locals can still go bowling when we’re going full bore with state tournaments and things like that. The common goal is for everyone to go bowling, right?”
For Sarah, always ensuring that youth bowlers have a place to play is a key part of sustaining the business. As a former youth bowler and coach, and current youth bowling coordinator, Sarah Elliot understands the value a vibrant bowling community can provide to area kids.
“For me youth bowling is super important,” she said. “Our youth bowling program continues to grow, last year we had 60-some kids, this year we have over 80 kids. I think one of the coolest things about bowling is that your age, ability or skill doesn’t matter – you can start bowling any time. Even if you think you look goofy out there, everybody looks goofy bowling in my opinion.”
As youth bowling coordinator, Sarah organizes the youth bowling league at Dale’s Weston Lanes. Every year she develops a new theme to keep the league interesting and educational. This year it is safari-themed.
“We’re learning about bowling while we learn about safari animals,” Sarah said. “I try to keep it different, especially for the kids who are in it year after year – they’re not learning the same lessons. We’re learning in a little bit of a different way every year. We have different age levels but we all work on the same stuff and the kids hear the same stuff, yet they’re all going to take something different away depending where they’re at skill-level wise.”
Sarah said bowling has experienced something of a social media boom recently that has drawn a new generation to the sport.
“People don’t always see it as a competitive sport, but once social media became a thing, people were starting to see the intensity of the bowling,” Sarah said.
A 2024 US Bowling Corporation report states that Gen Z prioritizes experiences over possessions and those individuals seek out venues that offer social engagement and Instagram-worthy moments.
“Bowling alleys have responded by incorporating trendy aesthetics, social media-friendly spaces, and customizable experiences that resonate with younger audiences,” the report states.
Sarah also said participating in youth bowling can be an advantageous avenue for collecting scholarship money. A student who recently graduated with her son, she said, raised $21,000 in scholarship money through bowling.
“He’s still, as a college student, able to raise funds that help him, which I think is really cool,” she said. “Not a lot of other sports have that much money ... you can start making scholarship money when you’re five years old on the lanes.”
While Dale’s Weston Lanes has seen great success over the past 35 years, the business also endured multiple hardships. In the evening hours of April 30, 2007, following two weddings and state tournament activity, a fire broke out in the center of the building, causing significant damage to the 16-lane alley.
“It was a seven-alarm fire but it actually got put out pretty quickly,” Dale said. “What happened was the heat just melted everything and obviously there was the smoke damage.”
“The control counter in the middle section is what got hit the most,” Sarah said. “The fire doors shut and we were able to get everything cleaned up.”
For what could have been a disaster, it occurred at a relatively convenient time, Dale said, as the busy spring bowling season was just winding down.
“We ended up not really closing the whole building down, we were essentially running two different buildings with the middle part [closed],” Dale said.
True to the Elliot family’s hard work and resilience, they pushed forward and eight days later the building hosted 450 people for the Marathon County Tavern League banquet.
Thirteen years later, the Elliot family, and the rest of the world, experienced the business’ biggest interruption: the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Being shut down for COVID was probably the scariest thing,” Sarah said. “I haven’t seen my dad look like that since the fire, mainly because he didn’t know when we were going to be open and how things were going to happen.”
“They shut us down and we were right in the middle of the youth state tournament,” Dale said. “They told us, ‘tomorrow you’re closed.’ We had absolutely no idea how long it was going to be and what was going to happen.”
Unlike the 2007 fire, which closed down the center part of the building, the pandemic restricted all parts of the business: bowling, banquet and dining.
“We lost everything, people weren’t getting married, companies weren’t going out and having conferences anymore. That was a real, real trying time,” Dale said.
Looking back, Dale said the uncertainty of the pandemic made it a worse situation than the 2007 fire.
“You just didn’t know what the next step was,” he said. “In our business you usually know, year to year, what you’re going to be doing, but at that time we didn’t know what was going on at any place. That was probably even harder than the fire. We just didn’t know from day to day what was going to happen.”
For Sarah, taking care of the lanes is a large responsibility, but also something she’s been doing her whole life, to a certain degree.
“I was three when they first bought the place. I would come clean and help do stuff,” she remembers.
It’s difficult for Sarah to remember exactly when she started working at the bowling alley, since she spent most days there helping out from a young age.
“I did lane waitressing, I cooked, I bartended,” she said. “It wasn’t until I got closer to graduation that I started diving into things a little bit more. I alway enjoyed the people aspect of it, so HR was something I always flocked towards.”
Over the past year, since Dale privately signaled his retirement to his daughter, Sarah has been taking on more responsibilities. During that time she’s had the opportunity to learn first hand from her dad, while also keeping an eye to the future.
“The world changes with the generations and the way generations do things. I think that’s another reason my dad felt like it was time – there’s a lot of technology coming out and new things happening and you get to a certain point where you don’t want to learn that anymore,” she said. “He still enjoys a lot of the stuff so we’re going to keep him busy and give him some projects.”
While Dale is now retired from running the business, he still tends to some duties at the center — in addition to serving on the tavern league board and maintaining the Jason Elliot Memorial Foundation (JEM), named in honor of his son who died at age 16. JEM raises funds to aid teens in scholarships, mental health, youth hunts and snowmobile clubs.
“My brother was eight years older than me and we lost him in a car accident when he was 16, and he loved this place,” Sarah said. “He loved bowling, he loved everything about it, he loved the people. It sucks that I don’t get to see where he would have taken things had he been here, but I know that one of the things is that he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have it. It was important to him to keep it in the family.”
As for what Sarah will do with the family business, she said there are not too many changes on the horizon, especially big splashy ones.
“One of the biggest questions everybody keeps asking me is if I’m going to change it from Dale’s Weston Lanes to Sarah’s Weston Lanes,” she said. “That’s absolutely a ‘no.’ I will always leave it Dale’s Weston Lanes because that’s how this whole bad boy came about. He gets to keep the credit.”
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