Note About Traffic: This morning I left 30 minutes early and my commute was back down to a respectable time. Although, I ended up at the office at 6:30...So last night was bowling night. I was off last week because I had a few spots zapped on my hand again thanks to the folks at the Las Vegas Skin and Cancer Center. Due to one of the spots being the thumb on my right hand, I was not able to bowl last week. That meant last night I was a little cold.
As we all sat down at our table awaiting the ten minute warm up, I glanced over the sheet showing the league standings as well as our personal bowling records. When did my average get all the way up to 160?! Oh well... Just means I have to bowl better consistently. Yeah... good luck with that.
I looked over the rest of our team and noticed all the averages were getting up there. Not bad. Even better is the fact that we are currently in third place. Third place out of like 25 teams. We don't have the best averages as a team, but they are good and we seem to bowl just good enough to win 5 out of 7 points every week. Pretty exciting... Well, it is for me anyway.
The team we were pitted against; while in 10th (roughly) place, had an average 25 pins higher than ours. I suspected we would have to bowl well to win. In our first game, we did not do that. It was just ugly across the board. I think my score was a 138... Lauri and Sondra were also well below average. Our only saving grace was that Luke stepped up to the plate and finished strong bowling exactly his average. We ended up loosing the first game by 78 points. Ouch.
The second game was the opposite. We all finally found a bit of a groove and the pins started falling. I don't know what changed, but something definitely felt different in the second game. Even in spite of a gutter ball following a spare, I ended the game with a 193. If I had struck out I would have finally cracked a 200 game... something I am yet to do this season. We ended up winning by 66 pins.
Side note: Each "match" consists of 7 points. You bowl three games and each game won counts as two points. Then if you combine the team scores across the three games, the team with the higher pin total wins the last point.
For those of your keeping score at home, the score on the match is all tied up at 2-2 coming into the final game. We need to beat the other team by at least 13 points to pick up the pin-total win also. The game begins. Unlike the previous games, both teams are bowling well. We jump out to a 30 pin lead, but then can't put any more distance between us and the other team. As we get closer to the 10th frame I notice the other team has gotten quite serious. They don't seem to be talking much and I can tell their adrenaline is pumping every time they get a strike. (Yes... it happens in bowling just like any other sport.) But our team rose to the occasion. Every time they got a strike we would match. If they got a spare... we would match.
We entered the 10th frame at the same time. Our first bowler on one lane... Theirs on the other. We still have about a 30 pin lead, but that isn't even close to being a safe. The last frame would make the difference. Their lead off bowler gets up and bowls a strike. Undeterred, Luke picks up his ball and approaches.... STRIKE! Woo-hoo Luke! After they finish, it is back to the same lead. Sondra gives up a little ground, but coming into my turn we still have the lead.
The next two up are myself and the third bowler from their team. He rolls a strike. I roll a strike. He rolls a 7 split. I roll a strike. *Yes!* (little pumping of the fist action there). As we walk away from our turn and make way for the final two bowlers, our lead has extended a bit. It isn't impossible for us to loose, but Lauri would have to roll gutters and she just doesn't do that. With her first ball, she puts the game away with a strike. We walk away with 5 out of 7 points winning the night.
It was actually mildly exciting. I find myself looking forward to next week. Can't wait actually.
--Chris
PS: My final three game average on the night was 166.6666666667.
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