Team Selection and Midstates

Okay now I´ve come to the decision that since I have some free time during the day, I´m gonna devote more time to this blog.

The Wichita State University Collegiate Bowling Team was posted two weeks ago, and as I predicted I did not make the selected team; However, I did make the Developmental Team ( the B-Team) and the difference between the two is that the selected team plays more tournaments, is the official representative of the school and they get equipment and more intense training.

I got assigned an associate coach, I don´t really know his first name, but I know his last name is Slaugther and he´s a cop. It will be good to get some regular training and get to work!

Last week they announced the Selected and Developmental teams for the Midstates tournament, which is the first tournament of the season and I was on a pretty good team, so I thought. As been told throughout history a team is as strong as it´s weakest link, which turned out to be someone I kinda dislike (let´s just say clash of characters) but i´m not gonna spend time cussing someone out cause they had a bad day/tournament, cause it happens to everyone.

I started the tournament off really good and after the first block (four games) I was over par (200+ average) and psyched about what was going on. The format of the collegiate tournaments is usually in the way is that teams consist of five players and they play a block of three to four games at a time and then another three to four games without reconditioning the lanes, they also consist of so called "baker" games where the team plays one game with each player playing two frames. This specific tournament had 10 team games and 16 baker games. After seven team games I was doing quite good, I didn´t miss many makeable spares and was hitting the pocket like a mad man.

Then came day two, with a 7:30 a.m. roll call after an exhausting day before I had a hard time lining up to the lanes. The lanes were hooking much more then the day before so I absolutely butchered my average during the last three team games. On to the baker part of the tournament, in the beginning of the tournament, our team (team Steelsmith) made a bet with team Waliczek that whoever had lower pinfall would have to do 50 reps. After the 10 team games we had a 20 pin lead on them. When the baker section started I was on fire I had a good reacion on the lanes and only left 2 splits and struck like a machine. After 14 baker games with only 2 left I was anchoring our team with a good 60 pins on team Waliczek but then they started striking like maniacs, they shot a 255 and after a bad start to our game we managed to string 6 strikes in the end for a 212 so with one game to go we had roughly a 20 pin lead and we started off really good, after 5 frames we were on par but after the other team finished with a 222 we knew we needed to fill frames to win. With that in mind with 4 frames to go it looked like we were gonna do it but then Hank threw a solid pocket hit, but a ringing 10 pin came to our fall as he didn´t spare it. Also Andy missed the pocket for an 8 count and chopped the spare, which he shouldn´t have done cause he made a stupid decision to use his strike ball for the spare, so it was up to Matt and me to finish the game to win with a small margin. So Matt did his thing and struck so it was all up to me I needed 2 strikes in the 10th to seal the deal, I got up to the approach and I was playing so deep that I was lofting over the gutter, I threw the ball really well but it read the lane earlier then I predicted and with a real high pocket hit I left a 4 pin :(

so it was all over, I made my spare and threw 2handed on my fillball, and when I threw the fillball a cameraman from the local news was taping me so I ended up being on the sports highlights, which was really cool cause they only showed clips of 3 bowlers...

This week I need to bowl a lot cause next week the PBA tour comes to Wichita for the PBA World Championship which is the first major tournament of the PBA season, and yours truly is going to be playing, and also breaking down barriers for Icelandic bowling.

well that´s all for now, I promise to follow up with updates
Good Night and Good Luck