Thursday, April 27th

My friend Ray and I decided to take the day and go to Rockford, Il on the way to the regional in Madison to watch the Collegiate Championships at Cherry Bowl. For those of you that haven’t witnessed team College bowling, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a pretty awesome display. We just hung out all day watching both the boys and girls teams bowl, then headed to Ron Braggs house for dinner ( Ron works for Brunswick and kindly invited us over to cook out ). Ray and I headed over there with Sean Rash and Ryan Abel and we just hung out talking and drinking all night. We had a great time and really appreciated the hospitality.

Friday, April 28th

We watched some more of the college tourney before we had to head up to Madison for the practice session. We were bowling on Pattern #1 this weekend on Anvilane. From the get go we could tell that the scores were going to be pretty high this weekend, because there was a lot of hold in the middle and plenty of recovery right. I was using a mix of Agents, Fired Ups and Pyros. I only bowled about an hour or so and I tried to help Ray out a little. Ray ( Silveri ) was bowling his 3rd or 4th regional and we were still working some bugs out. I coach Ray and he’s got quite a bit of talent, but not much experience. I had a pro-am that night at 7:00 then we grabbed some dinner and went back to the hotel.

Saturday, April 29th

We went to the bowl fairly early to watch the NFL Draft and to see what the scores were doing. When we walked in it looked like the scores were through the roof ! There were 250 games everywhere. The scoring pace was around +150 just to get a check ( 43 spots). 

We went into the bar to watch the draft and eat some lunch. The NFL Draft is something that I always look forward to, but my Steelers were drafting 32nd and I would be bowling by then. Then just as I was about to leave to go to roll call, they announced the Steelers had traded up to take Santonio Holmes from Ohio State. Sweet !!! My day was starting out pretty good, or so I thought. I’d had a few spots on my thumb crack open due to my bad dry skin condition, so I thought I’d put some new skin on it ( which I never use ). Bad idea !!! I couldn’t get a feel of the ball and I dropped several shots in practice. When the lights came out it got even worse. A couple of splits and another “drop” for gutter-7 was all I needed to see to rip that stuff off. I started with 188, which isn’t good when the scoring pace is as high as it is. I followed that up with 206 and 209, still not much feel and I just couldn’t strike. I was throwing an Agent, playing around 15-18. I knew deep down that it was the right ball choice and I tried to stay patient. My patience started to pay off in game 4. I went 249, 232, 252, and 257 the next 4 games to get up to +193 ( safely in the cut ). My last game I finished with 208, but it was probably the best game I had in the set. I ended up at +201 for the day and sat in 32 place. Not that great, but at least I get to bowl tomorrow.

Sunday, April 30th

I knew that the only chance that I would have is to get out of the gates quickly. I was 60 pins out of 16th place so I needed a big 5-game set to advance. I started with my Agent again ( that was the only ball I used all day yesterday ) and had 279 with a solid 9 in game 1. I followed that with 236, 233 and 206 to get up to +355 and sat in 14th place with 1 to go. I finished strong with another 279 ( and another solid 9 ! ) to end up at +434 and stay in 14th place.

I bowled Brian Kjergard in the Round of 16 and got out to a 1-0 lead with a 257-234 win in Game 1. Then my look started to go away and I never really got it back. I lost the next 3 games and finished in 12th place.

I felt like I bowled pretty well most of the weekend. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to end, but it could have been worse I guess. All in all things were feeling pretty good though. Now I get to enjoy a little time off. My next report will come from Willowbrook in a couple of weeks.