New Bowling Record

Two posts in one day, what a switch.

Anyways, I play sports for the amusement of others and have generally given up on attempting to be good at any of them so I rarely take an interest in my scores. This last weekend I played in a bowling tournament/fundraiser with Brian and some other folks for his football team. I had actually considered just paying in and not bowling but figured that was lame and decided to bowl.

My first game was my typical mid-80's and I actually threw the ball correctly, if slowly, each frame. The second game started out the same and no one really paid attention when I bowled other than to see if it was their turn. At the fourth frame I got a spare, no big deal. The fifth frame was a strike that went unnoticed. The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth were also strikes. No one noticed. I will admit that I was let down that no one was paying enough attention to notice the streak but figured that if they did it would end so I didn't say anything until after the ninth frame. At that point Brian looked up and saw my score and gave me this slack-jawed look of surprise and didn't really seem to know what to say. He'd seen me bowl before and had no reason to expect it. Of course now that folks were paying attention I did not throw either a spare or strike in the tenth frame and had a typical high-70's third game.

My score in the second game was 180. While it's no 300 game, it's still the highest score I have ever gotten in a bowling game by far. I think my previous high was 125. The best part is that the grip and throw I was using for that round was nowhere near a standard throw. My "normal" throw is this weird backhanded slow throw that feels natural for me and seems to work well enough. No one has been able to replicate it despite trying. The ball goes slowly down the alley with a backspin that changes past the midpoint to a forward spin reaching a max speed of a whole 10 mph, about half of what most of the guys were throwing.

I took a picture of the scoreboard for the second game on Brian's camera and will post it when I get the picture from him.