Sam Schliman came to Toronto from Chicago in 1913. Very little was heard of Sam until 1915 when he went to the ABC Tournament in Peoria, Ill. and cashed in both doubles and singles.

In 1916 he joined A. J. Hartman and Herb Gillis on Hartman’s Brunswicks team when that team was the first Toronto team to challenge for the McCallum Trophy. He appeared in the line-up of the team on 18 of 19 occasions on which they defended or challenged for the McCallum Trophy over the next 5 years.

However, it was at the ABC Tournament in Toledo, Ohio, in 1916 that he won the Singles Championship at the age of 37. He was the first and only Toronto bowler ever to win an ABC Singles Championship. He rolled 685 which tied him with two other U. S. bowlers, but he won the 3 game roll-off with 564.

In 1917 Sam bowled in the ABC Tournament again but, like all of his predecessors and successors he failed to become a repeat Singles Champion.

Sam Schliman’s crowning achievement in bowling came in the 1921 ABC Tournament in Buffalo, New York, when he was a member of the Saunders team which won the ABC Tournament Team Event with a 3066 score to which Sam contributed 603, entering the tournament with a 192 average. Thus Sam Schliman became Toronto’s only 2 time ABC Champion, and as far as we know Canada’s only 2 time ABC Champion. Sam was bowling as a resident of Toronto on both occasions. However, we do not know whether he ever took out Canadian citizenship, but from 1913 until his death he was always a Toronto bowler. We do not know the date of his death, but his name does not appear in our records after the mid thirties.

Besides his bowling prowess Sam left a legacy with us which few know about to-day. Many of his strikes, it seems, were those in which the 6 pin is pushed into the channel and then gently falls towards, and knocks out, the 10 pin. This happened so frequently that Toronto bowlers began to refer to that type of strike as the “Sam Schliman Kicker”.