Note about problem with RSS feed in sidebar

If my readers have noticed that there’s been nothing new in the USBC’s RSS feed in my sidebar since the World Women’s Championships in September, it’s because the USBC has developed a problem with the feed. I have alerted them to the problem, but these things may take time to be rectified. Please bear with me…I have little control over it.

“Bowling With Chris” added to blogroll

This has been a good week for finding personal bowling blogs: Last night, I found out that one of my virtual league bowlers, known to me as “kwik8,” has started a blog. He puts it up front that he is a member of the Seismic Bowling review staff, so many of his future posts will be about the new Seismic ball releases. To throw him a bone, I’ve added his blog to the blogroll in the sidebar.

Jan. 18 league night recap

My Week 20 bowling, frame-by-frame (Linked to BowlSK sheet)

I usually don’t get off to good starts, and I was clean through 12 frames tonight, but with the spare misses after that point, I definitely left some pins on the deck.

Result: 216-154-177=547
Average (60 games): 174
Average for last 9 games: 178
Next week’s AVG+1 score: 571

It was a good night for Brian, who was over 400 for the first time in my memory, but the team only managed to split the points after our opponents ran away with the second game.

Spelling of bowler’s name corrected in posts

I have been alerted via a recent NEBA result that I may have been in error on a bowler’s last name, with the bowler with a recent 300 game in the Tuesday Scratch Sportsmen league having the actual last name of Corneau (the R and N sort of blend together for Comeau on the LeagueSecretary.com standings sheet). The error has been corrected both in the initial post about the 300 game and in the mid-season round-up post.

Three personal blogs added to blogroll

Thanks to a new referrer that I spotted in my blog stats recently, I found three new (to me) personal bowling blogs, listed below:

  • “Bowling in the Burgh,” done by a bowler in the Pittsburgh area.
  • “Bowling Roller Coaster,” by a bowler in the Washington, DC area.
  • “Joanie’s Bowling Blog,” by a female bowler in Colorado (there was no information on the specific area of the state).

The links to these blogs appear in the sidebar, in the “Blogroll” category. Welcome! 😀

Jan. 11 league night recap

My Week 19 bowling, frame-by-frame (Linked to BowlSK sheet)

It was not my best night (and possibly excusable because I’m also dealing with the loss of a fairly close friend), but the pressure was on in the 10th in both Games 2 and 3, and I delivered, the second game to win the point, and the third game to shut my opponent out.

Result: 136-168-199=503
Average (57 games): 173
Average for last 9 games: 186
Next week’s AVG+1 score: 533

The team started the second half by taking all four against the first half winners, and Carl and Berta were the biggest reasons for it: Both shot close to 500, Carl missing by just a single stick.

Jan. 10 notes

Just a couple of notes as my second half of the season is about to get underway:

  • My real team is scheduled to bowl against the defending champions and first-half winners, “The Incredibowls,” tomorrow.
  • My winter virtual league season also gets underway this week, and I’m on a team with “Cryssen,” “jbungard,” “slaterracing,” and “trekguy.” Our team name will be “Diamond Flush,” arrived at by the fact that diamonds are a form of carbon, which has the atomic number of 6 (our team number), and that a poker hand of five diamonds is a flush (while also suggesting the “flush pocket hit” term in bowling).

Jan. 4 league night recap (includes final first half standings)

With my original Strikes showing signs of troublesome wear, I finally wore a pair of Strike 300s that I bought about a year ago for the first time. I was worried about the slide sole being a little slick, but I hit it up with my wire brush before bowling and it was like instantly breaking them in.

My Week 18 bowling, frame-by-frame (Linked to BowlSK sheet)

Not many strikes, all told, but this was a total effort. It seems a key on my spares is not rushing the line, something I failed to keep in mind when I missed my two makeable spares, but I was around 87% on those tonight. More importantly, a ball change down to my Hy-Road combined with keeping that swing plane lesson from the Norm Duke DVD in mind gave me enough strikes to have a 214 third game, but the important thing was that I made my spares that game, so that was my first clean game of the season. 😀

Result: 185-159-214=558
Average (54 games): 174
Average for last 9 games: 190
Next week’s AVG+1 score: 571

We only needed one point from our opponents to assure ourselves 5th place, and we got it second game, which, as it turned out, we won by enough to create a tie for total. I believe “Outta Da Guttah” won three from “Bottoms Up!,” so we missed a tie for 4th place by just a half point. “The Incredibowls” won three from “The Mustangs,” so the defending league champions will be defending their title in the roll-off in May.

By the way, this is as high as my team has ever finished a half in this league. 😀

Jan. 3 practice

This past weekend, I received a late Christmas gift to myself in the mail: Norm Duke’s instructional DVD. I sat down to watch it last night after the Celtics game, and decided in my practice today to work on one of the lessons that I thought could help me immediately, the one on swing planes. The general idea of this lesson is that in the horizontal plane (which controls direction), you want to start the ball in the opposite direction to where you want the ball to go. After struggling with my Hy-Road again, I switched to the Reign of Fire and really began to work on it. It seemed to help, with me getting two games over my league average and the third being ruined by a few single pin misses. I did find, though, that that swing plane lesson also helped on spares, and I’ll just chalk the misses to being a bit fatigued from the bowling pace. I’m hopeful this can carry into tomorrow night.

Jan. 2 league standings update

“Pinfall Wizards” could make no position headway despite taking three points from “The Mustangs,” remaining in 5th place going into this week’s position round. Our opponents will be “The 5 G’s,” who are three points behind us. The next team is “Dee’s Boys II,” five points behind us, so we’re guaranteed no worse a finish for the first half than 6th. We are just a point behind “Bottoms Up!” but 6.5 points behind “Outta Da Guttah,” so the best we can hope for is 4th place. “The Mustangs” lead “The Incredibowls” by a point and “Outta Da Guttah” by 2.5 points, so there could be a three-way tie for first if the latter team sweeps “Bottoms Up!” and the first place match splits 2.5-1.5 in favor of “The Incredibowls.”

Individually, I had the second high series with handicap (687) for the men last week.

2011-12 mid-season round-up

As I do every season around this time, I take a look at who had the high averages and scores at Westgate Lanes for both the men and women at the unofficial midway point of the season. As always, this is based on the most recent standings sheets (listed on this page), with averages being based on a minimum of 36 games, and those leagues having four-game series (Tuesday Scratch Sportsmen and B.B.I.S.) having the first three games counted for consideration for high series. Youth bowlers were included if they qualified for their gender.

Men

Average: 232; Kevin Thibeault (Saturday Seniors {youth})
Series: 836; Carl Nordstrom (Thursday Hcp. Doubles)
Game: 300; Greg Rand (Boston Rhythm & Bowling), Jim Donaher (Brockton Ten Pin), Dave Chalifoux, Danny Khuu (Coke Classic), Sean Richard (His & Hers), Rob Roy, Mike Trent, Jay Krushas (Thursday Night Patriots), Donie Corneau (Tuesday Scratch Sportsmen), John Kunan (Westgate Mixed)

Women

Average: 213; Shirley Major (Thursday Hcp. Doubles)
Series: 720; Chris Major (Boston Rhythm & Bowling)
Game: 279; Tina Gannon (Coke Classic)

Good luck to everyone in the second half! 😀

Dec. 28 league night recap

My Week 17 bowling, frame-by-frame (Linked to BowlSK sheet)

Much better except for spares tonight, and I credit most of the night to recognizing early that I needed a ball change and actually making the change. The result was my high series to date. 😀

Result: 183-221-214=618
Average (51 games): 173
Average for last 9 games: 181
Next week’s AVG+1 score: 550

My team got strong nights from both Berta and Brian, and we helped some teams get closer to the lead going into next week’s position week, as the team took three of four from the team in first place.

Edit made to post about April 2008 Northeast Amateur Tournament

I had always seen “NAT 2008 results” listed on this blog’s dashboard as a search term leading to blog views of my post about the Northeast Amateur Tournament. Fearing that the post may have been a misleading result on the search term in question, I have finally taken the time to edit the post and the Permalink to it to specify that it’s about the Northeast Amateur Tournament by full name. I may still get hits on this post because of the mention of the search term, but at least the “thumbnail” of the search result may include the full name now.

Dec. 26 league standings update

After taking all four points from “Bottoms Up!” last week, “Pinfall Wizards” now trail that team by just a point in 5th place, and are 11 points behind the leaders, “The Mustangs” (our opponents this week), who are three points ahead of “The Incredibowls” with one week to go before the position week for the first half. “The Incredibowls” face “The 5 G’s” this week, and “Outta Da Guttah” aren’t out of it 4.5 points behind the lead and bowling “Deadwood” this week.

Christmas outing with brother

As had happened in 2009, my brother and I had some time on our hands with our family obligiations for Christmas wrapped up on Christmas Eve, so we went bowling on Christmas Day for the second time. There were more people bowling this time, including a couple in another league that I knew. I told Junior afterward that I wouldn’t complain, because I actually had two games over my league average. I had missed a 7 pin, but made the single 10 every time I had it, but left a pocket 7-10 twice during the session. My brother was rusty, but did have a 115 third game, which is a bit better than he usually bowls.

Dec. 21 league night recap

My Week 16 bowling, frame-by-frame (Linked to BowlSK sheet)

It was a mixed bag, but, in the big picture, I left the lanes feeling better about my bowling than I have recently. My start was promising, but then many of my shots were bad until I thought to make a speed adjustment midway through Game 3. My spare game was spotty, but I did make a pressure spare in the 10th frame of Game 2 to win the point for my team.

Result: 182-175-177=534
Average (48 games): 171
Average for last 9 games: 169
Next week’s AVG+1 score: 544

Everyone contributed at some point to a total win (taking all 4 points), but Berta helped us win the third game comfortably with her new league high of 179.

Link to “Stars & Strikes” added to sidebar list

Westgate Lanes had out a photocopy of an article in the current (Dec. 2011) Stars & Strikes magazine written by Dustin Markowitz of Motiv with his thoughts on how bowling can improve, and that prompted a search for the magazine’s site. The site has links to the current news articles and opinion pieces (including a column by Chuck Pezzano, the dean of bowling writers) in the menu, and also has a link to subscribe for hard copies. If you like your freebies on the Internet (and I know I do 🙂 ), the site does have a PDF copy of the current issue in the “Archives” as well as PDF copies of back issues dating back to 2007. Needless to say, the link is now in the sidebar, in the “Bowling Sites” category.