So I finally had a chance to bowl on something other than a house shot, and all I can say is wow that was rough.
On the base I work on, they’re doing a league where different military bases are putting together bowling teams for a sport shot league. Each house will put out the same shot for their team and we’ll submit our scores for competition amongst them.
Tonight was the tryout and it was on what they said was a competitive shot. But they said it was closer to a sport shot. And we had to go in blind for the tryout. We weren’t allowed to be given any information on what the pattern is.
They had 8 lanes set up for this. And it ended up being 1 pair for a 5 minute warmup, and two games on each of the other 3 pairs. And to make it worse, I was the only one who showed up to this days tryout, we have 4 different days.
So practice never showed me anything, I spent the time throwing the ball to get loose and I was trying to figure out a line in the process. I had an idea of my line but couldn’t quite hit it. I was using my after dark pearl because it’s my go to ball for league and from what I had gathered, outside of 5 was a flood and there seemed to be a decent amount of oil in the middle but it was a short pattern. I figured the after dark pearl would be good for controlling the back end. It was when I hit my spot but not if I missed by the slightest. I tried playing up 10 with it but I wasn’t finishing strong in the pocket, a few weird leaves.
So anyways I started off horrible, I’m a 200 on house shot average, so I go 170 to start then 130(ewwwww). Switched pairs but kept trying to square peg round hole. Went 150 then 175 but that 175, I finally made a switch and went with my dare devil trick with out of box finish. I played up 6 with less hand and finished well.
Then I switched pairs again and finished with 20something then 245. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, they drop your high and low game and come up with your average based on the other 4 games.
But I was humbled and ended up proud that I was able to bounce back doing different things to end up shooting a 245 game.
And luckily for me, there are 4 tryout dates, this was the first one, and we can try out multiple times. I can’t do Thursday or next Thursday due to regular league so I should be able to come in next Tuesday with a real game plan in mind. I’m going to use the practice to try a couple other things, I’m gonna try to cover some boards in the middle and maybe that will give me another look that works for me.
But tonight really showed where I’m really at and what I need to work on. I can’t wait to do it again.