Summer League - Week 12 Recap

Last night marked the end of our summer league at Victory Lanes—twelve weeks of blood, sweat, and tears. It was a fun, albeit hot, summer. Our team was matched up against an equally competitive opponent on lanes 17 and 18, and it turned out to be one for the books.

That lane pair has given us trouble all season, and last night was no exception. Due to multiple scoring errors, someone (yours truly) had to sit at the settee the entire night manually updating the scores for both teams. Thankfully, we only needed two or three re-racks, which was a small win. Overall, we finished in a reasonable amount of time—not the last team to leave the lanes for once.

Our performance was inconsistent. One of our teammates stepped up and bowled his best three-game series of the year, helping us secure three more points toward our season total. We won Game 1 and took overall pin count, but dropped Games 2 and 3. I don’t anticipate us moving up much, if at all, in the final standings.

Personally, I bowled poorly. My open frame rate was a dismal 56%, and my first-ball average came in at just 7.68 pins. I stuck with the GB5 for most of the night and used the Black Venom for combination spares. Unfortunately, the Black Venom didn’t give me the motion I needed for strike shots.

My night could be summed up in two words: 9-pins and splits.

For a moment, I thought I was in a 9-pin no-tap tournament—I had twelve 9-pin first balls, which would have been a perfect game in that format. In a regular league match, though, it was just frustrating. I converted only 50% of my single-pin spares.

On the bright side, I stayed near the pocket most of the night and didn’t pull as many shots to the left as I usually do. But despite my pocket accuracy, I left some of the ugliest splits I’ve seen all year: five total—including a couple of 5-7s, and one each of 4-6-10, 4-6-9-10, and 4-6-7. I’ve never left so many 4-6 splits in a single night. I failed to convert any of them, which severely impacted both my average and morale.

Next week, I’ll provide a full recap of the summer season and a look ahead at what’s in store for the fall/winter league.

Keep striking!