Golden Boy

It’s been a long day – physically, mentally, and emotionally. We were all in favor of bowling the six five-person team games all in one day, and it was an incredible challenge. Not only does it take about an hour for each match, but after already bowling 18 competition games and tons of practice, it wears on your body.

My guys and I came up a little short, and finished in fourth (sounds familiar, huh). The difference between third and fourth places was 14 pins. The women finished second in their team event.

The highlight of my day was winning the All Events Title. The All Events Title is an individual competition that is awarded after the 24-game qualifier used to determine the 16 bowlers who continue on to the Masters. Going into today, I had a 78-pin lead; when all was over, it was four, but that was enough to grab the gold. My scores weren’t all that great: 148-235-169-180-183-169 for a six-game total of 1084. At the end of the day, I was so exhausted I could barely smile or enjoy the title, especially knowing that I now have to bowl another 16 games over the next two days. At least the pace will be a little better than the slow, drawn out rhythm we had going on today. Looking back on it, I’m enjoying it very much and will enjoy it even more tomorrow when we receive our medals.

It was nice bowling as a team. We definitely showed moments of greatness and moments of weakness, as well. To break up the day, we bowled three games, had lunch and medal presentations, then our next three games. After three games, we were in second place, three pins behind Australia. The next game was pretty average, but Australia gained another 100 pins on us. We had a disastrous fifth game, but picked it up in the sixth game, only to come up short. It was a valiant effort and I am proud of the way we hung in there to the very end, even if we don’t have a medal to show for it.

What was interesting, though, is that in the final game, our team was paired up with one of the Pacer teams, made up of bowlers who are either not with a full team (some countries only sent one or two bowlers) or are the sixth man on their team. One of the people on the pacer team was the person in second place, so I was watching him very closely. Little did I know that Emil from Venezuela, a very talented bowler, was making his way back into the picture. Like I said, when the final scores were published, I still had a four-pin advantage, enough to take the gold.

So now it’s R&R time. We had a little Chinese food to celebrate Sam’s birthday and I’m sleeping in a little later to rest up for tomorrow. The women bowl early, and the men bowl following the medal presentation. I hope to have good news to report tomorrow, and I’ll try to get some pictures of me with my medal to put up when we conclude. Wish me luck :).