Frank Buffa Named 2025 BBIA Industry Service Award Recipient

Arlington, Texas – Bowling pro shop pioneer, acclaimed distributor, accomplished coach and bowler Frank Buffa of Montreal, Canada, has been selected as the 2025 Billiard and Bowling Institute of America’s Industry Service Award recipient. 

Buffa holds the highest coaching rank in the Canada – Level Three status, which is equivalent to the USBC Gold Level, which he also holds. Internationally, Buffa has coached teams from Italy, Qatar, and the UAE, in addition to Team Canada. 

Buffa came to Canada in 1959 as a young boy who had played bocce in his native Italy. The transition to duckpins and eventually tenpins came easily to Buffa, who won championships in both sports before committing to tenpin bowling. 

Buffa earned a master’s degree in physics and spent more than 20 years teaching high school physics and math. The lack of ball drillers in Quebec at the time prompted Buffa to embark on becoming a proficient ball driller. His first pro shop in the basement of his house was one of the first pro shops in Canada. 

In 1995, Buffa Distribution Center was founded and in in 2003, The Studio Buffa became the first training center for bowling in Canada. In 2012, Frank Buffa passed the torch to his son Mark, who is the President of Buffa Distributing. Buffa now serves on the board of directors of the company he founded, which today, is the largest bowling products distributor in Canada. 

Buffa will be honored on May 15 at the BBIA Annual Convention, which runs May 13-15 at the Fairmont Tremblant, in Mont-Tremblant, Canada.