The Spratford Sisters headed to Cleveland, OH this past weekend to bowl in the 51st Annual Bacardi Singles. It is a prestigious tournament hosted by the TNBA at Freeway Lanes in Wickliffe. I was hoping to defend my title. Qualifying consisted of two-5 game blocks on Saturday. The top half returned on Sunday morning to bowl another five games. The field was then cut to the top 12 to bowl another four games. The top five after 19 games bowl the stepladder finals.
Michelle and Vicki arrived early on Friday to bowl the practice session and check out the Hammer demo day. They were scheduled to bowl squad A early Saturday morning. I chose to bowl squad B so I didn't have to bowl on the fresh or cross my sisters in the many brackets that they have to offer.
Michelle started off slow, undecided on which ball to use. Her first set consisted of: 189 - 160 - 245 - 227 - 193 (+14)
Vicki was consistent, using her Ebonite Lane Breaker and Magic Action. Her first five games: 205 - 255 - 203 - 221 - 231 (+115)
The lanes were not dressed between the squads, so I got to bowl on the broken down lanes, where I am more comfortable. I used my Columbia Freeze that I recently got drilled by Jo Ann Foti of Ten in the Pit Shop at North Arlington Lanes. My first set consisted of: 208 - 220 - 236 - 215 - 258 (+137). I missed two easy spares in game four. I had a couple of other opens that were splits.
The pattern was definitely more playable than last year. If I remember crrectly, only one person was plus on day one. Rumor has it that we were bowling on the "White" sport pattern this year, as were the Seniors. The Men were bowling on the "Red" pattern. +225 was leading for the women after five games! The scores were very high; not typical for a "sport" pattern.
Michelle and Vicki headed back to the lanes to start their second set at 4:00 pm on the fresh again. Michelle settled on her original Storm Dimension and shot: 220 - 212 - 205 - 215 - 259. She was + 125 after 10 games.
Vicki started her second set low, but bounced back the next four games. She added 158 - 216 - 217 - 258 - 248 for +220.
I returned to the lanes at 8:00 pm to bowl my second set. I was still using my Freeze but switched to my Ebonite Clash in the middle. I finished with my Freeze as I was getting a little carry down. My next five games: 201 - 225 - 234 - 235 - 300 (!). I was the last lane to finish, even after someone had shot 299. I was a little nervouse but focused on my breathing and pre-shot routine that I had learned earlier in the year during my trip to the Kegel Training Center. This was my 7th 300 game and very exciting. I finished my two blocks with +332.
After the ten games, I was in 4th, Vicki was in 13th, and Michelle was 24th. Leading was +411! We were all safely in the cut and bowling early the next morning.
After bowling, I headed to the Tournament Office to drop off my 300 paperwork and ran into Eric Kearney, husband of Kim Terrell, an elite bowler and Assistant Team USA Coach. Eric works for USBC and was checking out this year's tournament. He told me he was going to have one of his weriters call me to talk about the tournament. During the phone interview, I couldn't help but mention the Sprat PACK blog.
http://www.bowl.com/news/xmlburner.jsp?xa=./webapps/ROOT/news/main/data/021410TNBA1.xml
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