A Scattered Brain

We are just one day away from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and I can’t wait anymore! I love the Olympics and always have. For me, the first week of the Summer Games are the best because that is when all of the swimming events take place. I am caught up in not only the events themselves but the side stories. Michael Phelps going for 8 Gold medals, Dara Torres competing at 41 years old; they are all so compelling. I will DVR every bit of content I can and will probably watch a bunch on the web as well. I will keep track of the medal count constantly hoping that the United States is always in first. I get almost as excited about the Olympics as I do the NCAA Tournament.

However, there are a couple of aspects of the Olympics that I feel are lacking and need change. The first; the IOC should have never chosen China to host. For all of the geopolitical reasons that exist, choosing China was irresponsible and arrogant by the IOC. There was a time I felt that the U.S. should protest and not send a team to China and I agree that we were right to not send a team to Moscow in 1980. However, I do understand that the Olympics are supposed to be about athletic competition, not the policies or politics of the host nation and the athletes should not have to suffer to serve a political end. That is part of why China should not be the host. When it is known long before hand that a country will be controversial for significant reason, that country should not be in the running for an Olympic bid. It isn’t like this is a new concern, people have been protesting this choice since it was made. So, while politics shouldn’t have an effect on the athletes, it absolutely must play a role in selecting the host and the IOC should be ashamed of considering China for the games and I believe they did so partly just to cause the controversy in the U.S. especially.

The second aspect covers all Olympic Games and that is the allowed use of professional athletes in the games. The primary reason for allowing professionals was understandable; to counter act the USSR and Eastern European Bloc’s use of ‘professional’ amateur athletes. The world knew that while they weren’t part of professional clubs, team athletes from those countries were by all accounts professionals. So, 20 years too late, the IOC allowed professionals for all events. Of course, that started in 1992… after the fall of the Berlin Wall… at which point, the need to allow professionals was greatly diminished.

This is another area where I have changed my mind over the years. I agreed with the use of pros for the primary reason that the Olympics should showcase the best athletes regardless of pro/amateur status. However, now I take the stance that pros are paid already to perform in their profession and are showcased already through the countless TV networks and internet. If you want to see someone play, you have ample opportunity to. However, rising stars and those currently not paid directly for their competition should get this chance to show off in front of the world. It was easy to allow professionals before, it should be easy to go back to amateur competition.

Despite some flaws, I love the Olympics, the competition, and the side stories. I think NBC does a great job mostly of presenting the Games (except for that nasty time delay issue that is hard to avoid) and I will look forward greatly to the next 2 weeks!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been pretty quiet about bowling lately and that has been for one primary reason… the last two months have really been bad. Ever since my great night (and best ever) on January 16th, I’ve not had one night over my average. Until last night… and it all just seemed to click again.

I bowled a 603 series and had two games over 200. My release was smooth and consistent and for the most part, my targeting was good too. Even in the middle 162 game, most of my strike shots were decent with a couple of bad breaks with splits.

Here are my scores for the season; you’ll be able to see what I mean about my slump.

I’ve also gotten my average back up over 180… dropping below that was a real shot against my ego for this season. There are only 8 weeks left that count toward average so achieving my goal of 190 for the season is well out of reach. If I can get two more series in the 600’s and none in the 400’s over that time I’ll be pretty happy.

For the first time in a long time, and at least since I’ve been there, Purdue is in sole possesion of first place in the Big Ten for men’s basketball.  This has been a long time coming and is great to see.  The team is made up of primarily young players (four freshman regularly start for the team) so I didn’t expect much from this season except hopefully building to the next two years.

All expectations have been well exceeded by this group of kids.  They play hard, and most importantly play together.  No one person is the star or tries to take the glory.  Each night a different two or three players tend to step up to give Purdue the win.  They are having a nice 9 game winning streak and just came off a terrific win at Wisconsin, a place they hadn’t won at since 1996.

Hopefully Purdue can keep this up going into the conference tournament and NCAA tournament as well.  This just makes me more excited for March coming up!

So, last night was the Super Bowl… la di da. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to pay attention as much as I would have liked as Connor is really keeping us on our toes now with all of his crawling and pulling himself up on things. Even more unfortunate is that I don’t seem to have missed anything. From what I saw, outside of the 4th quarter the game was boring and none of the commercials were all that great.

First, the game. I was routing for the Patriots; partly because I do like them, but mostly because I think the 1972 Dolphins are insufferable and I’m sick of hearing how they are the only perfect team and all of their pomp and circumstance around that. I hope the Giants enjoy their cases of champagne that the Fish will send them. I am, however, happy for Eli Manning. I used to not think much of him as he seemed in his past to not work very hard. This year, it was evident that he worked much harder on becoming a good quarterback and while he still has room for improvement, I was impressed with him the 2nd half of the season. That pass in the fourth quarter to put them ahead for good after a scramble was Elway-esque and made me happy for him.

Now the commercials were just as pedestrian as the game itself. I only have a few to judge from but in my opinion the first Diet Pepsi Max commercial was the best of the game. Taking it’s play from a classic 90’s SNL running skit (Night at the Roxbury) was pretty clever and the cameo by Chris Kattan at the end really added to the whole thing. Other than that, nothing really grabbed my attention enough away from everything else going on.

Overall, I would rate the Super Bowl experience this year a D+. Nothing worse than a D+. How do you dress it up? “It wasn’t a D, it was a D+!” If there are any commercials that you liked that I should check out, please let me know. I know you can see all of the commercials on MySpace and I may check them out with recommendations.

So, we’ve just nearly passed the mid point of the season and so far, not too bad. I’ve had a few bad weeks, but for the most part it was pretty nice. I’ve been able to maintain a 180+ average, about 10 pins higher than last season so that’s a positive.

My biggest issue and average killer is my recent decline in spare shooting. Outside of this past week, I’ve been missing about half of my single pin spares. Sometimes I would shrug it off, but then I realized that shooting a single pin spare (no matter the pin) is like shooting free throws in basketball. I have a high standard when I see pro and college players shooting less than 90% free throws and now will hold myself to the same standard. If I can’t make 90% of my single pin spares, obviously I should work on that first and foremost. I can’t expect to strike more than 50% of the time so spare shooting is extremely important. Missing a single pin can account for 11 pins in scoring (the spare + next frame) so it is worth much more than just the single miss. This will be the thing I work on most over the rest of the season.

So, here are my scores for the first 17 weeks. Enjoy.

Did you see that last week!!!! I had some lucky breaks in the first two games and some equally unlucky breaks in the third game. Regardless, 641 is my personal best 3 game series so I’m pleased with that. I’ll be even happier if I get another 600 series next week…

Please note, I’m not sure why the table gets a little messed up when it posts, while editing everything looks good. It doesn’t seem to matter how I input the table, so oh well. I’m thinking about moving my blog elsewhere, and this may be the catalyst to do so.

Take care all and have a great week.

This bowling year is off to a strange start.  The first week was horrible and the last two weeks have started bad and ended GREAT!  Here is the chart:

Here’s the best and worst part.  I know exactly what I’m changing during that third game; my tempo.  For some reason though, it’s taking that long to adjust to find what’s right for me.  If I can get that reaction time down to a reasonable level I think I can start to average 190+ on a regular basis.

So, the summer season is over.  I ended up with a 185 average which isn’t too bad, but the season was a steady decline from the first week on down.  I’ll try to make the trend the other way for the long winter season.  I plan to incorporate something into my game that I’m always lacking; focus.  I will be more deliberate with my approach and try to throw every ball with a purpose instead of sometimes showing focus and other times just going up and bowling quickly.  Even if I am having a bad game/night, I need to work on maintaining a solid focus so that is my first goal for this season.

As far as average, I’m going to shoot for a goal of 190 for the season.  This will be quite difficult I know over 30+ weeks.  Goals are meant to be hard though, right?

I will try to be more consistent with updating my scores for those that have missed it.  We’ll see how that goes.

Greetings All once again,

So, the new season has started and along with bowling, I am also the League Secretary/Treasurer.  It’s the first time for me to take on that role, and aside from the extra cash I’ll receive at the end of the season, it’s something that really keeps me busy throughout the night.  I thought it would be just a simple as collecting the money and validating scores, but there is actually quite a bit more; so I guess it seems I’ll be really earning the money.

From a bowling stand point, at least so far, the added responsibilities have helped my game.  I’m focusing so much time and energy on my duties that when it’s time for me to go up to bowl I just quickly clear my head and go for it.  I do a lot less thinking in between frames not allowing me to over-analyze my previous frame(s).

Here is the table for the league so far:

If I’m lucky, I hope to be able to maintain above a 190 average for the summer.  I believe that 200 at this time, while it would be wonderful is a bit unrealistic.  190 may be as well, but with the good start, I wouldn’t feel right to keep my original goal of 180.

I hope all is well with all of you!

Greetings to all of my bowling fans. The long winter season is finally over. We have two weeks off before the summer session starts; so now is the best time to post my last set of stats. So, without further ado, here are the details of the entire season:

Overall, I am much more pleased with the second half than I was with the first half.  My spare shooting improved tremendously.  I had a lot more clean games (especially in the last 5 weeks with 4 of them).

One striking statistic is the average per game number.  In the first half, they were all fairly even; now there is a clear improvement from the first game to the third.  Perhaps, I should come and bowl an extra game of warmup on league nights?  Something to consider for the summer.

Well, I’ll let you go for now.  With the new software I’m writing to track my scores, it may be a while before I write the ability to export to a web format, but it will be something I’m working on.

Have a great day and take care!

Greetings all,

I hope you all had a terrific holiday season.  Bowling is back in full swing (it’s been going the last couple of weeks as well, but nothing really exciting to write about) and we got a 4th member for our team and I think that will work out very well.

So, why was it the best night ever?  Well, I had a couple of personal bests.  First, all of my games were over my average so that’s always a good thing.  Second, I had my highest series ever: 633 (for a 211 average for the night).  Now, that by itself is enough to make me happy and fairly proud, but there is more.

My last game was absolutely incredible.  I opened up with the first 9 frames as strikes and had a perfect game going into the 10th.  Well, rather it was nervers, freak release, combination of it all, I didn’t finish the 300 game.  I ended up with a 4 spare 8 in the tenth to finish with a 272.  Even in practice, where I normally average about 10 pins higher than league, I’ve never broken 270 before.  The game got really exciting after I got the first six strikes in a row, also a first for me.  I feel good that even after the nerves started kicking in that I continued to strike for a few more frames.

These are the types of nights that make bowling really fun and keep you coming back.  Now to find a way to do that kind of thing more consistently.

Have a great day!