opoli

Another great week for Bowl Movement. We entered the week with 1 win, 3 losses.  Having notched an unexpected victory in game 3 last week, we’re now tied for 14th place. Right where we want to be – a predatory beast of the plain, concealed in the grass that is 2nd to last place.

Silent and waiting.

Biding our time.

Ready to pounce on any bowling team, gazelle or other potential prey…

On to the current week. We did a little multi-tasking. Celebrated a birthday and kicked some ass. Kris Inman – parent of two up and coming Graphic Arts Bowling League stars Cal Inman and Liz Cardenas – turned 39 last night. One more year ’til the big FOUR-OH! Festivities, flowers and ice cream sandwiches. Good stuff and it meant that we had a solid crowd cheering us on.

We also did a little bowling. Here’s our story.

Once upon a time there was a team that completely dominated their opponent. The team’s name was Bowl Movement and the time was Wednesday, Sept 10th.

As our recent experience with the Olympics has taught us all – the spoils of victory and endorsement riches come to a very, very select group. To those who are willing to sacrifice, to work hard, to forge ahead through any obstacle and to gut out those moments of doubt and fear that accompany any quest for greatness.

My writing can’t do the reality justice so just imagine a compelling story of perseverance and triumph rolling off the lips of Bob Costas, a nice video montage along with some commentary from our parents.

Final Tally: 4 points us. 0 points them. Thank you very much.

Let’s meet our opponent

We played Team 5.

They were a friendly and capable crew featuring three members of the Runyon Family (Bill, Nancy and their daughter Ashley). Nancy’s been bowling since the mid-80’s and she’s a damn good bowler. Dropped a 175 on us in the first game. Nancy is also the league treasurer – so she was heavily occupied collecting league payments and organizing the resulting paperwork until mid-way through the second game. Bill is just returning to the game after a decade long absence. Very nice guy. He just switched to a finger-tip ball and is still on the early side of the learning curve. Next time we meet he’ll be deadly. Ashely – very likely the youngest bowler in the alley – had Tweety-bird ball and was honing her game. She made a big leap the second game, more than doubling her initial score of 58.

The other two bowlers – Bill Runyon and Gean Andross were good people. Quiet. Friendly. Solid Bowlers.

Handicap

Handicap is going to play a big part in the early weeks. Our average gave us a 187 pin lead going into each game – that’s a big deficit for the other team to make up, especially when we’re bowling above average as we were this time. We’ve got a lot of new bowlers but for the first few weeks we’re going to be increasing average at a steep clip, that’ll make it tough for other teams. We’ll want to pick up as many points as possible in this early stage because they’ll be harder to come by mid-season.

Bowler of the Week: This award is new. Some may say that I invented this highly sought after, soon-to-be-world-famous-bowling-award simply because I had an incredible performance on the lanes. To those people I have one thing to say: You’re right.

With that said, this is the most impartial and transparent most valuable player award in the history of sport. This award will go to the player who exceeds their average by the greatest number of pins that week. Before handing out this incredibly esteemed award I want to say that everyone on the team bowled VERY well (I just bowled better). EVERYONE on the team bowled above their average – by a lot. It was a tight race.

Winner: Me. 41 pins over average.[1. More caveats. I've heard rumblings that my bowling effort in the first week, my deliberate effort to lower my average and the fact that I purposely threw the ball in the gutter half of the time should cast a shadow over my Bowler of the Week Award. Well, maybe you're right. But one person's shadow is another person's rainbow. Ces't la pomme.]

So. Congrats to Me :)

Now for the weekly stats[2. No fancy charts this week :( I'm still working out how best to present all the data that our rabid fan base NEEDS to know. I think I found a solution at TechCrunch50 but I'm still waiting for beta-user access. Next week I'm hoping we'll have fancy interactive charts courtesy of the guys at i-charts.net.]:

Name	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Total Pins	Total w/ HC	Session Avg	1st Ball MPH	2nd Ball MPH
Carol Camp	139	121	116	376		125	15.86	15.65
Shannon Noe	132	104	115	351		117	14.21	14.60
Liz Cardenas	102	78	98	278		92	10.49	10.9
Cal Inman	114	83	104	301		100	14.61	14.29
Chris Camp	152	161	203	516		173	13.91	13.31
Bowl Movement	639	547	636	1822	2383

Tags: bowling

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 4:21 pm and is filed under bowling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.