What started your Track craze? What Track balls have you owned?
I believe for me it was sometime in 1995, while I was working in a bowling alley. One day after work, I got a couple of lanes just for fun and giggles. Anyway, the owner of the house came up to me and said, "Hey, throw this for a while." It was a Track NRG. My scores absolutely sucked, but I loved seeing that ball hook, so I bought it from him, and put minimal effort in to learning the ball or the game-I was just having fun. Unfortunately when I bowled sometime in '96, the ball was stolen from me.
So I went back into the market for another ball. Remembering the fun I had with the NRG, I just decided to stick with Track, so I bought a Sensor Xcel(I want to say I bought this one in '99). The hook wasn't nearly as large as the NRG, but it was alot of fun to go down and in with. That ball I kept for a very long time until a gave it to a friend of mine not too long ago who is just learning the game.
After that(Maybe in 2000) I bought a Champ, and T.K.O Contender. Funny thing is, I had no clue about what these balls did either, other than it was Track, and "it looked cool". Keep in mind, I still knew absolutely nothing about this game. To date, my high sanctioned game(300-2001,2004) are with these two. I've retired them recently, but I'll never give these up.
Track Silencer-Can't remember when I got this one. But I remember the hook wasn't so great with this one, but it has become one hell of a spare ball.
Track Phenom-I don't remember when I bought this one either, but I do know this was the last ball I bought based on looks, and no knowledge of this game. A couple of months ago, I did record my highest sanctioned series (783) to date. At this point, I was still doing it for sheer fun. I bowled bad...I bowled okay...I didn't care, it was just for kicks....until October of 2006.
My brother(who is the reason I started bowling in the first place) decided to get back into bowling, and started the smack talk. That put the competitive side of me into motion. So, I started reading, researching, talking to those who bowl well week in and week out, learned what drillings my balls had, etc. First thing I noticed, was the 4 out of 5 balls I had were all stack leverage-no variety at all. And then I looked at my equipment, and decided to get them all resurfaced, and plugs replaced. This alone improved my game, but I wanted more.
In the league I was in, I'm sure I had the oldest equipment out. So I found trackbowling.com, and gained more knowledge while working on my footwork, release, speed, finding my lines, etc.
When that slowly started coming together, I wanted to start acquiring more up to date equipment. This is where the Mean Machine(January '07), Power Machine(January '07), Phoenix (March '07), and Total NV (April '07) come in. That mixed with the years of knowledge I forced into my brain in a few months brought me up from a 173 mid way through the season, to 212 to finish. The last 5 weeks, I did not shoot lower than 720. Lol, and to think, I'm just getting started (hopefully).
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www.putfile.com/trackbowler627High game-300
High series-796
Current Arsenal- Track Power Machine, Ebonite Total NV, Track Phoenix, Track Mean Machine, Track Phenom, Track Equation, and Track Silencer.
