A blog (mostly) about tenpin bowling in the Bay State's "City of Champions"
Author: Rich
I started "The Tenth Board" to chronicle my experiences during the road back to league bowling after my heel fractures in 1999 (it took me 7 years before I started thinking seriously about it). I now use the blog as a combination of a personal bowling journal and a news site mostly about Westgate Lanes (Brockton, MA) and its bowlers.
Early on, I was pulling everything, including spare shots, and I likely had the wrong ball out, as well. After the first game, I pulled my Tropical out, and settled into a strike-on-the-right-lane, nothing-on-the-left pattern until I moved for my carry late in the 3rd game. That third game was probably better with better carry or made 10 pins, as well.
Result: 114-172-180=446 Average (6 games): 164 Next week’s AVG+1 score: 500
My team had it handed to us by Tim Major, who shot 700 in helping his team win all of the points.
It was Chris Zalewski’s turn to shine in one of his first adult leagues Friday night, as he had a fine 283 game, as noted in the week’s high scores. WTG Chris! 🎳😎
Last Tuesday, Aaron Major got his challenge league started by bookending his four-game series with a 270 game to start and a 268 to end it, per the recap (Lane 35). I was told the league was on Beaten Path to start the league.
Team 6 (as my team is known for now) is in a tie for 7th among 13, five points behind Last Empire, who have won all of their points so far. They are two points ahead of 4 On 9 Man, three ahead of Team 10, and four ahead of three teams tied for 4th; one of those teams, Spare Us, will be our opponents tonight.
Joe Bourhill had the one notable score Thursday night in the Patriots league, going 280-226-245 for a 751 set, per the LeagueSecretary.com recap (Team 7 on Lane 34). Nice bowling, Joe! 🎳😎
Here’s the first women’s score of note of the new season: Taylor Sinkler went 193-247-237 for a 677 set last Friday in the TNBA Mixed league, as shown on the LeagueSecretary.com recap (Team 10 on Lane 56). Nice bowling, Taylor! 🎳😎
Ed Roberts told me the Tuesday night BBIS league at Westgate has an opening for anyone who’d like to try out a challenge shot league, so, if you’re interested, they’d be more than happy to welcome you to their league.
My 2020-21 bowling season is going to be more different, and a lot busier, than any of my previous ones. I’ll start with my own bowling, which has changed quite a bit in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic:
With many bowlers taking at least a year off, Wednesday night will have just the Brunswick Mixed league, and that will be a four-man league. I am on a team currently with Jane Waters, a holdover from Warren Young’s team last year, and Donna Dalia, who is new to the league after being away from bowling for many years. My team actually forfeited last week, with yours truly having to sit out in order to attend the Pepsi league’s meeting (more on that later). Some of the Westgate Mixed bowlers joined my league for this season, so it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Last night was a solid set by last season’s standards. The first thing a regular reader of my personal posts might note is that this league is now down the high end of the house, as it has never been on Lanes 49-50 in the time I’ve been in it. A study of the BowlSK sheet should also produce the observation that the progress I’ve made on my single-pin spares held over, as I missed only one. There was a rough stretch of three open frames to end the second game, but, other than that, I made few mistakes.
Result: 180-156-183=519 Average (3 games): 173 Next week’s AVG+1 score: 525
The team ended up winning three points against Shawn’s team. Shawn thought last night’s pair was a tough one, so going over last year’s average on that pair was a good start, I thought.
All of my “Author’s links” stuff about my league bowling has been reset for the new season. Keep in mind, however, that I’m going to try to do as much as possible either at the lanes or ahead of time at home (often meaning copying formulas over on my spreadsheet log at home before entering scores in it on my phone at the lanes).
After a season of less involvement in other leagues, I’ll be busier than ever in them, even if not necessarily bowling in them. For starters, I was given the opportunity to run brackets for the Patriots league. I no longer have access to my trusted Perfect Brackets application (Windows Defender saw a driver file I needed for the hardware key as a threat.), but I was able to upgrade to the new T-Brac at a reduced price (I’d had the old version). The new version fixed the bug I had with the old version concerning the insertion of byes in brackets when I had “No byes” set. It also makes it easier for me to load bowler information from LeagueSecretary.com, so it’s been worth the investment already.
The final piece of my season’s puzzle fell into place last week at the Pepsi league’s meeting. Gerry LaTremouille is taking the season off from his leagues (but not from being the USBC association manager at Westgate). Seeing an opportunity, as Gerry was the Pepsi league’s secretary, I ran for, and was elected, league secretary, and Monday night was my first night. I had to purchase and download a copy of BLS, which I thought a bit of an adjustment from the Perfect Secretary I used to run the BowlingCommunity online league many years ago, but I’m quickly picking up how to do things in BLS (Don’t I always? 😎). Donna in the Westgate office will still be doing the league uploads to LeagueSecretary.com, but I will be posting them in the center, and I present here my first real standing sheet as a certified league officer:
I probably will cover the Pepsi league as I always have, but feel free to follow on LeagueSecretary.com.
I recently found Discord, an Internet chat service, through my involvement in a videogaming project, and I got to wondering if the bowlers were there. I searched Google, and, sure enough, they were, and, in the process, also found the bowlers on another social media service, the long-standing Reddit (on the Internet since 2005). The bowling Discord server was started by users of the bowling subreddit, so I decided to add these two resources together, although I’ve never been a “redditor.”
The links can both be found in the “Bowling Sites” list, but the Discord link acts a bit differently, as you’ll be taken to Discord’s login page, where you may sign up for a Discord account if you need to, then be dropped into the #welcome-rules channel on the server. Many Discord servers require you to be a member for a specified period (ten minutes, usually) before you can send messages in the server, so you may need to be patient. The Discord link on this website will load in a browser, but Discord has nice desktop and mobile apps, so if you have either or both and know how to add servers in those, feel free. I’m on Discord if I’m online usually, but don’t expect me to be active if I’m busy at Westgate, but feel free to “ping” me (mention me in a message) and I’ll try to get to you when I can. 🙂
Week 2 of the Patriots league saw Aaron Major (289), Roland Sandefur (279), and Anthony Green (276) all have big games, as noted in their weekly high scores. Nice bowling guys! 🎳😎
The Northeast Amateur Tournament reported on Facebook (must be logged in to view) that Matt Jackson was the winner of the Old School Singles event held yesterday (Sept. 13) at Westgate Lanes, defeating Calvin Scott 245-210 (with handicap) in the final match. In the “Old School” format, all of the qualifiers bowled two games, with […]
The Digital Bowling Society reported in the post above that Westgate’s Sean Richard was the winner of the season-opening Digibowl Tournament Series event at Old Mountain Lanes in Wakefield, RI with a 288-195 (with handicaps added) victory over Greg Tack in the title match.
“Big Country” AJ Voisine got the first night of certified league action at Westgate Lanes since the COVID pandemic ended the 2019-20 season off on the proper foot last night in the Patriots league with a perfect game to end his night. And I got it on video, below: Nice bowling, AJ! 🎳😎
Per their Facebook post (must be logged into Facebook to view), Westgate bowler Danny Khuu paired with Dave Gordon to win the Northeast Amateur Tournament’s Over/Under (45) Doubles tournament Sunday at Town Line Luxury Lanes in Malden, defeating Daquan Holley & Joe Austin 486-457 in the final match. WTG Khuu! 🎳🎉😎
I’ve been asked about the Westgate Mixed league, the other league that bowls on Wednesday night, and I can finally report that they will be meeting next Wednesday, as well, at 6 PM (before the Pepsi league’s meeting). I would assume both meetings will be in the pool room.
With the Pepsi league not set to meet until Sept. 9 (a week from tomorrow at the time of this writing), it’s not too late to get your teams in for a chance at a share of $5,000 in added prize money. The league’s flyer is below.
I stated in an earlier post that Westgate Lanes would be able to use every lane in the facility. If you’ve been in the bowling facility, you’ll know that a lot of this is because the tables at each pair (except for the lanes near the desk) are offset, with the table at the left lane closer to the ball return than the right one, keeping them at least 6′ from each other.
AC and Yogi did reveal the rest of their plan to accomplish social distancing for the leagues last night at the league officers meeting, the main point being that bowling will be done PBA style. This means the team on the left lane will bowl their entire first frame, then the team on the right lane will bowl their first two frames, one on each lane, with each team bowling two frames thereafter until the team that started bowls their 10th frame on the right lane. The other major point is that there will be temperature checks, random for now, done with one of the no-touch scanning thermometers everyone’s used to seeing by now.
Bowlers with questions may ask their league officers when their leagues meet in the coming days.
Always on the lookout for useful things to add to the sidebar links, I found, indirectly through Facebook, the Tenpin Toolkit app, developed by British coach Simon Kimber. It’s kind of a Swiss Army knife of bowling apps, as it has these features:
Angles & Targeting
Axis Tilt & Rotation
Ball Speed & RPM (Rev Rate)
Observation Trainer
Pattern Library
Score Calculator
Spare Names
Each of these tools is described in more detail on the app’s homepage (now linked in the sidebar, under “Bowling Software/Apps”), along with links to the app on the Apple Store and Google Play. The app does cost about US $10, but it could be the best $10 a bowler spends on technology.
I’d been looking for a spot to break out of my own bowling hiatus, and some dear friends and supporters who bowl in Kingston, the Baslers, provided the excuse when they told me they were about to move to Florida. A few planned meet-ups got postponed, but we finally did get together today. The Baslers, […]
One of challenge leagues at Westgate Lanes, the BBIS Match Play singles league, will be moving from Friday to Tuesday night this season, with Eric Lam, one of the league’s officers, providing me the flyer below:
I hope the new night for the league helps find them new bowlers. 🙂
I’ve been involved in another web design project (not for bowling), and, seeing what was out there now, I felt it was time to update this site a little bit. Looking through the available (free) themes, the Nucleare one looked fresh enough, but functionally similar to the P2 theme I’ve had, so I went with that.
I also had the opportunity to use a larger header graphic, so I used that to try my hand at some simple graphic design in Paint 3D, resulting in what’s on the site now. I went with the Boxer Red & Black this time, and was able to match the colors up on the site with the header somewhat. The site also has a little bit of a background to it. The last thing everyone will note is that the menu bar now has a search button, eliminating the need for the sidebar search widget.
Let me know on Facebook what you think of the new look.
Update: Paint 3D wasn’t using the full dimension of the image I’m allowed by the theme, so I did a second header, porting a blank canvas in the optimum theme dimension from Paint, first.
I’d like to also note that, with my font face choices (which I was able to make with this theme), it now makes a good mobile site, although you’ll still need to view the site in desktop mode in mobile browsers to get the sidebar.
Tim Major informed me that Westgate will run a five-week doubles league on Monday nights starting on Aug. 3, with the cost being $20/week, $10 of that going to lineage (bowling) and the rest to the prize fund. A message can be left with Tim at the desk for those seeking more information. Note: As the league will not have enough games, it will not be certified.
While I had to run a few other errands, I stopped in at Westgate, and was informed by Yogi Patel that he was told that he didn’t have to enforce social distancing with regard to lane assignments as long as his total capacity didn’t exceed 300. This they can use every lane in the house and offer the same leagues at the same times, and is likely the same statewide. Of course, the ultimate judgment about whether a bowler wants to bowl leagues this season will be up to the individual bowler.
I would have gone on Facebook Live today if Westgate Lanes changed drastically for the pandemic’s aftermath, but they didn’t install anything special, so I decided just to write a normal post. I was briefed by Yogi Patel and Tim Major, however, and they were able to report that the roof and air conditioning were repaired during the shutdown (likely during Phase 1 of the reopening in Massachusetts), and the facility has been given a thorough cleaning.
Westgate’s capacity for bowling will be 300, and masks will be required as you enter the facility, and you don’t have to wear them while you are bowling (in the settee area), but you must when you are going through the building. For the bowlers using house balls, those will be disinfected and wrapped in plastic as they are returned. Westgate is also encouraging social distancing where they can, with markers on the floor at various places in the establishment:
These are in front of the desk.And these are in the snack bar and pro shop area.
Kevin Thibeault has also informed me that only two people other than staff (mostly he & Alex Aguiar) will be allowed in the pro shop at a time.
Per the Facebook post above, Westgate Lanes announced that they will resume operations following the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, July 13, with hours from 12-9 PM. The center will follow all regulations and guidelines posted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for indoor recreation.
Looking forward to returning to bowling, finally! 😀
View this post on Instagram Congratulations to Bill Briggs (left), the first member of the Bristol-Plymouth USBC Hall of Fame elected by the merged association. Bill won the Brockton USBC association doubles (with #BPUSBC Hall of Famer Tina Gannon) and all-events titles in 2016, is a NEBA champion (won in 2001 at Milford Lanes in […]
Per the posted final prize list, Westgate bowler Kevin Thibeault has won the scratch doubles title at the 2020 Northeastern Open Championships at Yankee Lanes in Keene, NH with Chris Viale, and Patriots league sub Jon Hester won handicap doubles with Shawn Hagan. I was also told Hester additionally was a member of the winning scratch team, Massholes, as was were Hagan and Brian Egan, along with Bill Beck and Dave Chalifoux.
Per the post in their Facebook group, Westgate bowlers Sean Richard, Bill Briggs, and Danny Khuu won titles in a shortened Southeastern Mass. association tournament, which took place last month at Holiday Lanes in Westport. Richard and Briggs were on the winning scratch team with Ralph Dahlgren, John Camara, and Tiler Levesque, with Richard additionally winning handicap all-events and Khuu taking down the scratch singles title.
Per the Facebook post above, Westgate league bowler Ed Grossett, along with partner Derek DuBois, won the Bay State Open’s Over/Under (age 45) doubles event last Saturday at Bowlero Lowell with a 498-470 (with handicap) final match victory over Chuck Malatesta and Joe Bouchard. I did not share the live stream due technical problems, but […]
