What an interesting and always tough Hoosier Tournament this past weekend. If you believe you have bowled in a tough environment before, try bowling on some of the trickiest and mind-melting patterns ever. Besides the patterns, it is also the largest tournament of the year. This years mens field had 77 teams and i think around 50 or so womens teams. The men also had to start bowling each day at 7:45 in the morning. Saturday took 8 hours to bowl 6 games and Sunday about 4 hours for three games. THEN, there was a cut and single elimination match play. The first two rounds were best of 3, second round best of 5, and the final round best of 7.
A big congratulations to the girls squad for taking the title. They bowled amazing and made every shot count. Something that everyone can learn from.
Overall, i will say that i bowled ok. I made the change to grips in the week before and was still getting used to the feel. Its hard to say if i liked one over the other as they both have certain benefits that the other doesnt. With grips, i can get a little more on the ball with less effort, allowing me to focus on something else during the shot. Gripless allows a much better feel and "softness" to the shot which is sometimes more important. However, for the remaining college tournaments, i feel the grips will help with getting left and wheeling the ball.
The shots at the Hoosier were extremely difficult. First one on saturday was a 37ft pattern. Pretty much flat, with i think a medium volume, we had no miss room. Somehow, Jacob and myself started strong, firing a 259 and 246 game respectively. However for myself, the next three games i stumbled, only mustering games below 180 before getting yanked out. As for the team, we ended the day -200 overall for the six team games. Not bad considering we shot 840 one of the games. The pattern was so tough that leader for the mens was +2 overall. Crazy.
The next day was suprisingly the easiest pattern in terms of scoring. 48ft with a lot of volume in the middle forced us to play the gutter. A very rare occurence for long patterns. After breaking down 3-5, we were able to move in and kind of ride the hook we created at 4-5 and strike. I rolled a 205 to start then stumbled once again to a 170 game. As a team, we never shot below 1000 on sunday, allowing us to climb from 10th to 5th, missing the one round bye by 3 pins.
In match play, against McKendree, we bowled on a 42ft, flat, light volume pattern. This pattern was attacked by different angles from different teams, with us electing to move in and hook it from around 7-8. Unfortunately, we didnt make enough good shots to overcome McK, losing 0-2 and ending our run in the tournament.
Overall, i thought saturdays pattern was probably the fairest pattern, allowing for multiple style to have a whack at it. The light volume was probably the hardest, mainly because of the fact that we only had 10 balls on each lane to figure it out. This meant no time to break down a friction spot, so shots had to be pretty much spot on to strike.
As for the balls i used,
Saturday:
Nexus, Defiant Soul, Versa Max
Sunday Morning:
Defiant Soul
Sunday Afternoon:
Victory Road Pearl
So all my equipment saw action at one point. If one thing stands out from this weekend, its that playing the lanes from front to back, instead of side to side, can be crucial if wanting to make a run on anything tough, especially something fresh like sunday afternoon.
Signing out,
Cameron
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