Greetings to one and all (mostly I’m pretty sure it’s just my wife and the J that read this, and for that I truly thank you)

It isn’t exactly quite mid-season, but given that the rest of my team will miss the next two weeks I’m thinking we will just forfeit.  Of course, I’ll still probably go and bowl, but most likely not as part of my team at those times.  Given that, I’ll go ahead and reflect on my performance to this date.

Here are all of my scores up until now:

Wk# Date Lanes Gm1 Gm2 Gm3 Series Avg Run Avg
1 Sep 06, 2006 9-10 150 *218* 179 *547* 182.33 182.33
2 Sep 13, 2006 19-20 182 125 169 476 158.67 170.50
3 Sep 20, 2006 27-28 172 130 192 494 164.67 168.56
4 Sep 27, 2006 29-30 160 145 189 494 164.67 167.58
5 Oct 02, 2006 27-28 189 170 179 538 179.33 169.93
6 Oct 11, 2006 33-34 190 139 131 460 153.33 167.17
7 Oct 18, 2006 35-36 147 137 133 417 139.00 163.14
8 Oct 25, 2006 37-38 156 171 180 507 169.00 163.88
9 Nov 01, 2006 39-40 176 149 162 487 162.33 163.70
10 Nov 08, 2006 43-44 178 188 146 512 170.67 164.40
11 Nov 15, 2006 47-48 170 159 167 496 165.33 164.48
12 Nov 22, 2006 51-52 124 178 182 484 161.33 164.22
13 Nov 29, 2006 17-18 171 192 159 522 174.00 164.97
14 Dec 06, 2006 21-22 158 182 146 486 162.00 164.76
15 Dec 13, 2006 25-26 153 135 173 461 153.67 164.02
Game Averages:  165.07 161.20 165.80

We’ll start with the bad news and move on to the good news.  First thing that sticks out is the fact that my best week (and only 200 game of the season) was the first week.  I have no real explanation for this.  The other truly bad statistic is in 45 games so far, I’ve not had one clean game at all.  I don’t get that many in practice (I’ve only had 2 in about 90 games over the same time period) but that indicates a lot of missed easy spares.  My average would easily jump 10-20 pins a game if I could just stop missing so many single pin spares, which are really inexcusable to miss with such a relatively large margin of error.

Now to take some positive things from these stats.  First, I’m within a 4 pin range for each of my games each week.  That means that I don’t consistently have a bad game based only on where it comes out of the three.  So week to week, I may have a bad game 1, but overall it seems to even out.  Also, my average has stayed consistent since it came down from that really inflated first few weeks.  It may mean I haven’t improved much, but it also means I haven’t declined either.

I have been working on many tweaks in my game from my stance, to approach, to release and I’m hoping that from the lesson I’ve taken so far to some more planned lessons in the future that these changes will pay off in the long term.

Most importantly, I still enjoy going every week and as long as I’m having fun, I will continue.  Of course, you always have more fun if you can see yourself improving, but I’m sure that will come in time.

I hope that all of you have a truly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Be safe over the holidays and hopefully you’re able to take some time off to enjoy the season!