My wife and I bowl with two other guys in a 4 person team mixed league (rules are that at least one member of every team has to be of the opposite gender). It's a great league, I'm not really a fan of handicap leagues, but the people are great, and it's still a competitive league, just not overly competitive, people don't get all cocky or pissy. Well, our team is kind of a loaded team. Not really intentionally, that's just how it fell together. At the league meeting at the beginning of the year, all of us voted to raise the handicap in the league so it would be more fair, even knowing that would hurt us. There isn't much money in the league anyway, so there's no reason to be super competitive. The handicap is 80% of 840, up from last year which was 80% of 800. There was a vote to make it 90% of 840, but the rest of the league didn't want to make that size of a jump all in one year.
Last year we had a 140 avg woman bowling with us, and I bowled lefthanded. This year I'm bowling righthanded, and the lady from last year wasn't able to come back this year, so we replaced her with a kid straight out of youth leagues that is around mid 220s. He was looking for a team at that house on that night, and we all know his sister really well, plus we needed a teammate and were having trouble finding one. Our team average isn't obscenely over 840, but enough that if our team and the other team both shoot our averages, we will win fairly comfortably.
The league president is known as kind of a backstabber, or a guy that talks a big game until it affects him, then he bails. Well, the first time we bowled his team earlier in the year, they smoked us, we had an off night, and they were on. Didn't say a word about it. We won the first half, and had several good nights and one ridiculous night in there (2950 with a single game of 1039), and still nobody said a word. There are other pretty good or slightly loaded teams in the league that were around the top too, and the league president's team is one of them. We bowled them again this last week, and it was the other way around, they didn't bowl so well, and we shot 2850. This time however it was different. The president went around complaining to people about how we are ruining the league because no one else can keep up with our scoring pace, and it went so far as someone complaining to the owner/manager of the bowling center. As of this half, we are in 4th place, and the team that finished second last half is running away with this one.
I can just see an average cap being instituted next year, or at the very least raising handicap to offset our advantage, and I can see it being done at the league meeting at the beginning of the year. I really like the league, and don't want to quit, but does anybody have an idea how we can handle this? We didn't assemble this team with the intention of running everyone else out of the building, we just all like bowling together and happen to all bowl well. I know it's not fun to go up against a stacked team when you know you have a small chance of winning, but it makes it all the better when you can knock them down, or when you have something to shoot for. Maybe that's not how the rest of the people in the league feel. It's ok when they're winning, but as soon as they aren't, they find any excuse to call foul.
I'm not trying to create drama out of this, I'm wanting to know how to avoid it. I just like bowling, and bowling in that league, and I'd like to do it without irritating people or being perceived as "cheaters," in a sense, but I don't see how it will be possible next year to keep the same team and stay in the league unless the handicap is jacked up to ridiculous proportions.
That's just like, your opinion, man.
