I wanted to have a practice I could feel good about before seeing Ray on Thursday, and I got just that. My score was only just in the 500s, but I felt I was more or less on line, and I was making my single pin spares consistently, especially the pesky 10 pin. For the 10 pins, I was setting up around the 32 board (I learned from “CoachJim” from the forums and chat that you count the boards from the gutter on the same side as your bowling hand) and targeting the 10 board (second arrow). That allowed me plenty of room for the ball to hook and still hit the pin more or less full (and yes, I’ll still be getting a spare ball to shoot straight at those fairly soon). In fact, my only spare misses were multi-pin spares today.
I kind of slipped up in last game, pretty literally, as I felt my left (slide) foot slip in my slide on one shot and thoughtlessly wiped the slide pad on that shoe with my big towel, which had sweat on it. That caused me to stick, but fortunately I had a slide powder bag in my equipment bag from my previous bowling life, so I dabbed my slide pad w/ some of that and wiped it off again, this time making sure the part of the towel I did it with was dry. The experience was enough to cause me to worry about my footing the rest of the game, though, and I only managed a 152 even though I had a double in the middle of the game.
Result: 181-174-152=507
Running average (75 games): 163 Last 9 average: 154
If I can find the Massachusetts USBC Youth Association’s web site, I should have results from this past weekend’s scholarship tournament at Westgate Lanes soon.
The Tenth Board 