The bowling media community is unfortunately small, so when one of our journalists decides to close up shop it’s an incredibly big blow to the industry.

Herbert Bickel, whose BowlingDigital.com has served the international bowling community for nearly 20 years, announced Thursday he was shutting the site down at the end of the year.

Bickel has always been known as one of the hardest-working journalists in the press room at events around the world. In many cases, he worked tireless hours to cover events in Europe and Asia that were previously difficult to get information on.

Under his guidance, BowlingDigital essentially helped usher bowling media from a truly analog community, where most of the coverage was in print, to the digital age for a new generation of bowling fans.

The German born Bickel was a driving force in the dissemination of international bowling news and his presence will be greatly missed. In his announcement, he said he plans to continue to share some bowling news on Facebook and Twitter.

Herbert, we salute your efforts and the next time I see you, beers are on me. Prost!

Lucas Wiseman is the senior editor of FloBowling. He has covered bowling around the world for more than two decades. Follow him on Twitter @Lucas_Wiseman.