In my first two years bowling this tournament, I have had some success and our core 5 guys have also had some success. In my 3rd year, we went Eagle hunting though I think realistically, we would have been thrilled with a top 10 in any event. And I leave with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth even though I legitimately had my best all around individual tournament...But who really cares about individual accomplishments.
Our team practiced for 6 weeks on the pattern. We put our best effort yet into this tournament for the team event. One player from our companion team worked with us for those practice sessions. Our team shot under 3100 once and that was the 1st week. Otherwise, we worked the pattern and were able to score well. We were also gameplanning for the fact that our companion team was not going to do us any favors. We weren't able to even consider burning up 5 since we would have 3, maybe 4, guys on our companion team playing 2nd arrow at best. It is what it is.
So we practiced working on the 6 board during practice and the first five frames of game 1 before knowing that the traffic to our left would eventually force us deeper quicker. We anticipated it. To help us, I managed to convince the companion team to toss the ball up the 7-8 board during practice to create a hook spot. Which they should have been relatively comfortable with.
We hit the showcase lanes. There were 6 of us there if that is any indication of the concern of our companion team to bowl well.
We practiced for 10 minutes, and threw both strike and spare balls to simulate breakdown. We also wanted to be sharp on our spare games. We had less hook right than our home pattern, but the pattern as a whole played very close to our home house. We made it through 14 team frames and saw the breakdown and liked what we saw. But without practicing with the rest of the companion team, we knew we might have to make changes on the fly.
As the team event started, we stuck to our plan. We worked with the companion team to make sure they were in the right spots during practice. That's about all we got from them (except for the lone player on their team who practiced and worked with us for the previous 6 weeks and the showcase lanes.) We imagined we would struggle through the first 5 frames, and then hopefully, they would open up....
They opened up, and as a bonus, we did not struggle. In fact, we went clean the first 25 frames and I plugged in 5 strikes in the first five frames. Legitimately, we were already left of where most on this board have discussed playing...But what else can you do when you have traffic to your left and you have higher rev rates than those guys. We made our move in the 6th frame and found hold and hook....We shot 1041. A very respectable first game and the best out of the gate score we've shot even in our practice sessions. So we were pretty pumped.
There were two problems we saw developing though...The guy spinning surface between 3rd and 4th arrow destroying the push we had worked to create and the guy trying to play 5th arrow for some god forsaken reason. Next thing you know, 5 frames into game 2 and our lanes were pretty thrashed. No consistency. And no idea where to go. We shot 1002. We were the only team to have two games over 1000 on the squad which included a team that finished in the top 10 last year so we almost had hope. However, with a pair of lanes looking like they did, game 3 was all but a prayer. Simply put, We shot under 900. After a first game 248, I finished with 173, 183 for a low 600. We had two guys with 620's. The other two were 530 and 550. A 2934 was only good for 125th place.
It almost makes me wonder if team event should now consist of 10 player teams. Either that or maybe we need to just bowl on one lane. Where we come from, this it the one tournament a year I travel to. I think I'm a decent player and my 5 player squad is competitive. We know we've got to make changes to our team structure to become more competitive, but the talent pool in Anchorage willing to travel and spend the money to go to this tournament is thin and it's evident, that if you have 2 or 3 guys going solo playing all over the place, they can derail you on these patterns. So we've got a mission ahead of us to re-strategize our team formation and that includes convincing teams that have been going for decades to listen to the guys who have only been going for three years. Wish us luck...
Doubles and Singles is always a refreshing start. And always salvages our all events scores. Our pairs had classified bowlers on them prior to our squad which this year I think is an advantage. I put a 740 on the board in doubles going 256, 269, 215. We got 1316 and a top 50 score at the time. In singles, a slower start resulted in scores of 214, 234, and 267 for a 715 series and another top 50 score. I don't expect those to keep me in the top 200, in either event because there is just a ton of talent that bowls after us. Including Matt McNeil. LOL. I put my best all events score up at 2059 which was good for a tie at 13th. Won a good amount of bracket money and increased my tournament average to 224. My brother also shot his best all events score at 1940 and also hit the 1-5-9 pot in singles. All in all, it really was a good tournament, but I leave wondering what could have been.
Happy to be headed back to Reno next year. Baton Rouge was plenty expensive and pretty inconvienent. The showcase lanes were great and I hope they have them available next year in Reno.
