. . was a bit of a disaster. We go with a pretty large group every year (10+ teams), and for some reason they decided to bowl second squad singles and doubles this year. I can only imagine it was because of "too much oil." We showed up to find ourselves on a pair where with 2 games to go, the people in front of us were playing between 4th and 5th arrow already with really strong stuff. There were also lefties playing between 3rd and 4th with really strong stuff too. Needless to say, when we finally got to bowl, the pair was destroyed. I started out laying the ball down on 37 trying to keep it tight, because we spent all of practice going through the nose. My parents had stopped by for a little bit with my 93 year old grandpa, they were going to Branson for the weekend. Right after practice was over, grandpa tried to come down to tell us good luck, but he didn't see that there was a 6 inch step down to the bowlers area from the concourse. He fell, hit his head on a table, broke his glasses, cut near one of his eyes, and also cut his elbow open. He ended up being ok (mom being a nurse helped, and the bowling center was VERY attentive and helpful), but they had to go ahead and leave to go get his glasses fixed.
Got a little rattled, took a while to settle down, but singles and doubles was just a grind through and get it over with type deal. Got deeper and deeper and eventually was using a little loft, but it was a struggle trying to get the ball down the lane AND having enough angle to turn it over and carry. The pair we moved to for the second set was the pair the guys in front of us had come off to begin with, and by the time we got over there it was even worse. I was lofting about 10 feet of gutter the last couple games after an unsuccessful attempt at playing the 3 board. Just drew a really rough couple pairs, and it was frustrating because the rest of the house had plenty of oil, most were having trouble getting the ball to move.
Team house was a different story, kind of. We had a game plan, and executed it rather well, we just got tapped all day long. Pete Weber only shot 640 at the team house because he couldn't get the 10 out on one lane, and that's pretty well how our day went. We burned up the 5-6-7 board area, took a few frames to adjust, ended up having to play deeper than we thought we would, but once we got lined up, we really didn't miss. We just got tapped often enough to keep the scores down, and we were all playing different lines with different equipment with different covers to try and manage the transition and create area for each other. I didn't miss the pocket for the last 23 shots of the day, but couldn't get the 9 or the 10 out on the left lane the second game, and then the third game it flipped. Everybody else kind of went in spurts, would be 3 or 4 in a row, then 3 or 4 9 counts in a row. This time it wasn't just us on that pair, the rest of the house had it rough too, the high set of the squad was only 670.
All in all it was kind of a rough weekend, but everybody really bowled pretty well. Our plan for team was executed really well, but the pins just didn't cooperate for anyone.
