She came close in 2007 at the Queens Tournament in Charelotte, NC. She just needed one game to claim to the title and threw a real stinker in the finals. In 2012, Diandra Asbaty stepped up in the championship game, threw a strike in the tenth frame and completed her unfinished business. This was not about redemption but a true champion acting like it and doing it her way. Most of us will never get to experience these highs in our bowling career. The parallel is the league match, tenth frame, you need a shot to win. What will you do? You step up, take a deep breath, follow your routine, roll the shot and pray. You get the shot and your team wins. This is Championship stuff!!! If you throw the shot you wanted and you don’t get the score, keep your head up and be the champion. You did what you wanted under pressure. Sometimes the pins don’t fall. This will help you the next time. There will be a next time!!! Heres to the Ladies, the Queens. Well Done!!
Those of us who do not throw the ball hard or do not put a massive amount of revs on the ball have had difficulty finding high perfornace bowling balls for heavy oil conditions. Motiv has produced the Sigma Hybrid. Designed for medium-heavy oil, the Sigma Hybrid reads earlier and provides a smoother ball motion. League bowlers that are rev-challenged or speed dominant will appreciate the strength of the Sigma Hybrid on a fresh house shot. Tournament bowlers will use it on medium-heavy volume sport patterns to destroy the rack. This is music to our ears!! Selections whaere the RG is under 2.50 are getting harder to find. Try it. We bet you’ll like it!!!
As we approach our senior years, we may want to get back into the sport of bowling or just continue. There are some tips to help seniors bowl, have fun and score well.First, take a look at your bowling attire. It should be loose fitting and short sleeved to allow freedom of movement. If you are just getting back into the game, a house ball may be a good choice. A conventional grip is recommended for seniors and with house balls, you can experiment with the weight. If you select a ball that is too lightyou are giving up a lot of hitting power and your swing may flatten out. You want the weight to allow you to feel good after the third game. If you are using your own equipment and was drilled years ago, it probably needs to be re-drilled. It is recommended that seniors use wrist supportsto prevent ligament or tendon problems. If so, you should wear it when your ball is being re-fitted or drilled from scratch. If you have continued grip problems, you might want to drill a fourth finger hole. This may help grip the ball. Realizing that as we age we cannot bend as we used to , stretching exercises are recommended. Wearing back or knee supportsmay also prevent injury. Just remember your arm swing should be straight, natural and in line with your target pin. Using lane marks such as arrows or dots may help if the eyesight is not as good as it once was.
The bottom line is that there is no reason why seniors cannot bowl, be competitive, have loads of fun and leave the younger players wondering how they did it!!!
Coming down toward the end of the league bowling season, maintainig your average is sometimes a struggle. When you show up to bowl, you try your high performance balland it hooks off the lane!!! During the warmup you are just searching for a line. You move inside and try to swing the ball from the left side and get the ball to hook into the pocket. This works but the angle to the pocket has changed and lots of splits and hard to pick-up spares are left. You switch to your performance ball or “dry lane” ball with less hook, to try and straighten out the entry into the pocket with no luck. By now the lanes are so dry that the shot changes every time up and you are chasing the shot all night. Then you try to roll the ball harder and that does not work either. When it is over, your team has taken a beating and you are 150 pins below your series average. This is really hard to take. There is a lesson to be learned here because a good bowler must be able to adjust to these conditions. Keep your head up and keep trying–you will get it!!
The Tiara is up for grabs again. The USBC Queens Bowling Tournamentis upon us, 19-24 April 2012. Like anything else we do, to be great at it, you will fail along the way. Ask any woman bowler that has chased and won the Queens title. They will tell you about the whiffed 10 pin to miss the next round or the 450 series after setting a qualifying record. These stories are just a few of the ones represented in the field for the Queens Championship this year. Will Missy Parkin be able to repeat? It has not been done for over 30 years. The big thing about this or any other tournament is, when you fall you have to get back up or you will never know if you could have won. So they try and try and finally things come together and all the heartbreak is worth it.
Shannon O’Keefe is a highly regarded youn player who has never won the Queens. “I think pressure is something you put on yourself; it’s self-induced,” O’Keefe explains. “If it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be. It really comes down to that for me. By the time I am bowling a match at the Queens, I have done everything I can up to that moment to prepare, and if that’s not good enough at that particular moment, that’s OK because someday it will be. Before, I used to think ‘Well, I work so hard, I deserve this.’ Well, no, you don’t deserve it. No one ‘deserves’ anything.”“Let’s just say I hate to lose more than I love to win,” O’Keefe says. “So losing in match play does not make me happy, but learning how to recover from that bad shot, that bad game or that bad set is really what is going to separate those who have success at the Queens from those who will not.”“These days I am grateful every time I put my shoes on, because at any moment it could be taken away from me,” O’Keefe says. “And if that ever happens, I want the last moment doing what I love to have been enjoyable. And if that is losing, then at least I still was able to throw a bowling ball down the lane. It’s about finding positives in everything, and that has made the biggest difference.”
Good Luck Ladies. Wonder who will put it together this year???
She came close in 2007 at the Queens Tournament in Charelotte, NC. She just needed one game to claim to the title and threw a real stinker in the finals. In 2012, Diandra Asbaty stepped up in the championship game, threw a strike in the tenth frame and completed her unfinished business. This was not about redemption but a true champion acting like it and doing it her way. Most of us will never get to experience these highs in our bowling career. The parallel is the league match, tenth frame, you need a shot to win. What will you do? You step up, take a deep breath, follow your routine, roll the shot and pray. You get the shot and your team wins. This is Championship stuff!!! If you throw the shot you wanted and you don’t get the score, keep your head up and be the champion. You did what you wanted under pressure. Sometimes the pins don’t fall. This will help you the next time. There will be a next time!!! Heres to the Ladies, the Queens. Well Done!!
