Jeff McCorvey
Bowling
Legend has it that Jeff McCorvey was born with a bowling ball in his hand. Well, not exactly. But it didn’t take Jeff’s dad, Joe, long to put a ball in his hand.
Joe McCorvey was a member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) and owned three bowling centers. His son, Jeff, followed in his footsteps.
McCorvey started bowling when he was a year old and it became part of his life’s work. His long, storied career, that has spanned 48 years, has led McCorvey to induction into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame.
Growing up in Birmingham, McCorvey bowled in youth leagues until he was 17 and then moved to the adult leagues. After graduating from Altamont High School, McCorvey went to Auburn University and became a member of Tigers’ club team from 1980-1984. He won his first collegiate tournament in singles and led his team to a championship. McCorvey was the Southern Intercollegiate Bowling Conference (SIBC) Player of the Year in 1982 and went to nationals twice while at Auburn.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Management from Auburn in 1984, he moved to Huntsville and opened McCorvey’s Pro Shop inside Pin Palace Bowling Lanes. “I didn’t have a master plan,” he admits. All he knew was that the plan involved bowling.
McCorvey kept bowling and was named Huntsville’s Bowler of the Year in 1990. He won a handful of tournaments in Alabama and Mississippi.
He opened another pro shop in 1998 inside the Madison Bowling Center. Two years later, he opened a pro shop in Tuscaloosa and in 2004 he opened three pro shops in Birmingham. All total, McCorvey opened 102 pro shops in 14 states and 67 of them are still open.
While McCorvey was building his bowling business, he got a call to coach. Ken Provitt, Alabama A&M’s former Compliance Director, reached out to McCorvey to recommend a bowling coach for the Bulldogs. The two knew each other through bowling. McCorvey recommended his wife, Timi. Timi McCorvey, now Jeff’s ex-wife, coached the team in 1999 and a year later, McCorvey took the job. “I had done a lot of coaching the year before,” he says.
Hired in 2000, McCorvey led the Bulldogs to two Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) championships over the next 16 years, winning titles in 2007 and 2011. His best team, in 2006, finished second in the nation, losing to Fairleigh Dickinson in the national championship.
“We beat Nebraska to get to the national championship,” McCorvey recalls. “Nebraska was undefeated. I wish we could have beaten Fairleigh Dickinson. We just came up a little short.” McCorvey was named SWAC Coach of the Year in 2006, 2007 and 2010.
Whitney Smith-Boggus, a standout at Grissom High School, was a four-time All-American under McCorvey at Alabama A&M. She nominated him for the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame. “Jeff was all in about giving back to bowling and impacting the local community with his success as a college coach,” says Smith-Boggus, now as assistant principal at Gulf Shores Middle School. “To me, he was in it for all the right reasons. He took time to give back to the student-athletes. We would have team bonding nights. He took us camping and those type of events that he took us on helped us grow individually and collectively as a team. Jeff required a lot from us, but he made it comfortable. He had a way of uniting us even though we were from different parts of the country.”
McCorvey, 63, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2013. He stopped driving in October of 2024. His wife, Mary Grace, takes him wherever he needs to go. Together, they have four children. “It’s a growing disease,” McCorvey says. “It’s not an easy diagnosis.” Still, McCorvey refuses to let it slow him down.
This year marks his 48th year in the bowling business. “I’ve worked in bowling centers in high school and college,” he says. “I started drawing a check in 1977. I’ve had a very rewarding career. I excelled on the business side because of my degree. I can’t imagine things going any better.”
--Reggie Benson
