Sunday League Roll Off

Last night was the roll off for Sunday league. This has been one of the most fun leagues I’ve bowled in yet. I didn’t have a great season by any stretch of the imagination, but I still very much enjoyed this league, simply because we are good friends with most of the people in the league. We managed to win the third quarter of the league, so we were guaranteed a minimum of fourth place before the night had even started. Granted, there were only 7 teams in this league, but I digress…

So I bowled a couple of games before the league started, as is the norm, and as usual, I bowled horribly! However, I wasn’t too worried about scoring. I was focusing on loosening up and getting a good feel for the release before league started. I’ve noticed that since going to Newport, it takes me a few shots to get the feel for the release again. I also tried to focus on keeping a steady tempo with my feet. For quite some time now, I’ve had a slight pause on the second step (four step approach). I suspect this is part of the reason for the high back swing. I tried to reduce that to get a much smoother tempo through the approach, so its more “one, two, three, slide” as opposed to “one, two, pause, three, slide”. There was a slight timing change that came with it, but after a few shots I think I had my timing down pretty good.

So the lanes were assigned depending on the quarter you won. Since we won the third quarter, we got the second pair of league lanes, which happens to be one of the better pairs, if not THE best pair, in the house. Good start! Unfortunately, we were bowling a team that had some 30 – 40 pins handicap on us. Not insurmountable, but certainly not an easy win.

So during warm up, I was seeing more of the same from the practice games: a slight under reaction bringing the ball in behind the head pin. Learning from the last month of bowling, I decided to move 3 and 1. This will get in to the super wall just a little sooner and counter the over/under because of the slight increase in angle I’m entering the super wall. Things were looking good… time to bowl!

First game. I opened with a turkey. Not a bad start at all. I managed to keep a clean game with a few more strikes until the 8th frame. Then the wheels came off a little. I got slow in the 8th. REAL slow. So the ball finished strong and hit weak leaving me staring at a split, which I missed. I struck in the 9th and just needed to mark in the 10th to get a small 200. Instead, I get slow AGAIN and get the same result, leaving me with a 191 for my efforts. Not a bad start. It would have been nice to start the night with a 200, but a 190 is as good a start as any.

Second game. This game I opened up with a 5 bagger, followed by 9-spare, giving me 139 in the 5. NICE! Then, just like the game before it, the wheels fell of a little. Once again, I got a little slow and once again I get to stare down a split. Once again, I miss it! I think I had a couple spares in the 8th and 9th. I had a 188 already, I just needed to mark out the 10th and I would have 218. Unfortunately, I missed the first one – 9-spare, but I struck the final shot: 207, giving me 398 over two games. Not a bad start at all!

Third game. Unfortunately, by this time in the game I was standing WAY left, hard up against the ball return. To make things harder, I was starting to grab it a little at the bottom, which was pulling the ball in just enough that it was staying in oil a little longer that I would have liked. This was making the ball come in high and catching a whole lot of the head pin. Thankfully, I was leaving my self makeable spares for the most part. Unfortunately, there were a few ugly splits, so I had to take a couple pins and walk away. I don’t really remember any specifics, but I managed to walk away with a 182, so I bowled a pretty decent set for the night, with a 20 pin spread overall and a 580 for the night. Can’t complain at all considering most of this season I’ve been struggling to break in to the 500’s consistently.

Unfortunately, as a team, we just couldn’t perform with any consistency. Jennifer bowled low 180’s for the first 2 games, but like me, she struggled in the third to grind out a low 500. Jennifer has struggled all season with ball reaction, or lack thereof. Having recently refit the ball, we’ve managed to eliminate most of her wrist pain, which is a plus (Thanks again, Mo Pinel), now we just have to find a layout that will fit the bill for her so she can cover as many boards as she wants to. I think she would agree in saying this season has been a disappointment for her, on the whole. We’re planning on picking up a new ball for her in the next few weeks and drilling it up strong. We’re looking at a Morich Mania at the moment, but we may wait until July to make a new purchase when Mo puts his new release out there. We’ll see what happens. 🙂

Wes unfortunately struggled most of the night, which is unusual for him lately. I think he ground out a couple of 160’s the first two games and picked it up in the last game to shoot a 220 I think for a low 540. It looked to me that Wes was getting a slight over reaction most of the night. By the end of the night, the back ends had softened up enough that he wasn’t getting the over reaction anymore and the ball was carrying the pocket much better.

We finished 4th overall, which was a little disappointing since we had second locked up after two games. As I said earlier, we just stumbled at the finish line and couldn’t put the number up that we needed. Having said that, it was a great finish to a rather mediocre season. We have the Thursday league roll off this week, then a two week layoff before the summer league starts. Here’s hoping things will be better over the summer.