first night of sport league at cloverleaf in fremont was very instructive. pattern seemed a little short and the back end was very strong. used a track animal untamed first game and suffered with finding the right area to play. several splits and washouts later, i decided that a strong backend ball was not the way. game 2 went with a track crunchtime and changed my release to more roll and less hit. bowled pretty well games 2 and 3. so, what i learned:
straigher is better, just feed the ball to the naturally strong backend, speed is critical, too fast (washout), too slow (through the nose)
don't miss outside, i only missed once all night, but i watched others around me miss to the outside and never get back to the hole
go straight at spares, early on i missed some left side spares trying to hook the lane.
keep your first ball in the pocket and make your spares. i know that all of this sounds pretty basic, but watching some of the others in the league, they did not seem to understand this.
the pattern will be there for nine weeks, then change to something else for the last nine weeks. will report again then.