Week 12 and a Pre-Bowl

Last weekend I completed my third pre-bowl for my anticipated paternity leave in December. I was throwing the ball pretty well, at least as far as accuracy goes, but a lot of solid pocket hits left corner pins and anything high in the pocket left a split. I threw a 201, 188 and 181, but I thought my performance was better than what my series showed.

On league night I fared much better, throwing a 219, 213 and 241. I started the night with five strikes in a row and was immediately in the opposition's head. My teammates could hear them talking about my average and how easy I made it look. Anytime I can make the opposing team focus on my play instead of their own I know I must be doing my job.

Overall it was a pretty laid back night until the tenth frame of each game. The result of every game fell to my last frame and I was able to deliver all three times. We swept the third place team by a total of about 30 pins. Our team has been doing pretty well lately and I hope we can keep the momentum up as the position round closes in.

The last half of the last game did get pretty interesting for me, though. After a week of cooler temperatures we had a bit of a warm spell. I had tape in my thumb hole from the previous week and left it in to get more loft on the ball earlier in the night. The result was that my thumb began to swell from the increased pressure and friction and by the seventh frame the hole was too small even after I took the tape out. Each throw was a crapshoot as to whether the ball would come off my hand at all. Luckily I was able to strike until the tenth frame. The first ball in the tenth stuck more than the others, missed my target right, and left the 2-4-5. I needed to pick up the spare and get six pins on last ball to win the game. I picked up the spare and decided to move my last shot to the center of the lane to make sure I wouldn't gutter on the last ball.

It was a scary situation, one I hadn't dealt with before with the C-system. The weather has been cold the last few days, so hopefully I won't have the same problems tonight.