It has been brought to my attention recently that when you talk about bowling some countries need you to specify what kind of bowling you are talking about so to clarify: I'm digging 10-pin bowling lately.
On a whim one day, I got together with a few of my local pals and asked if they wanted to head over to the nearest Lotte Mart and have a game or two. Here we are 4 months later and our group averages around 12-15 attendees every Thursday and we have a league, weekly prizes, and 4 different championships. It isn't meant to be taken super serious but there are some guys that find it really important and one person who is so competitive that he may actually get kicked out of the group.
None of us are really good, but we do get a standout score every now and then and what we consider to be a great score might seem like child's play to someone who truly is good at this sport. If anyone ever gets over 150 points we consider that to be a very good score. The highest score any of us have ever gotten during our weekly competition is 175.
Take this game for example. This would be extremely rare for two of us to perform so well. The person in the middle was my friend's GF and in her defense she has only been bowling about 10 times in her life and the last time she actually went was several years ago. When you consider that I think she did pretty well.
Despite the fact that the average age of the people in our trope is probably well over 50, we are a silly group of guys and therefore the entire things is very casual and we have a number of awards that are up for grabs each week.
The all time score
The only medal i could find was for soccer / football so well, that is what is on the medal. This is up for grabs for anyone as long as the score happens on the official day which is normally Thursday. As I mentioned before that score is currently 175 and only a couple of people have even come close to getting that.
The "Gobbler"
This squeaking chicken was the closest I could come to getting a "turkey" and it is actually a dog chew toy. It also is worn around the neck like a medal and is available to anyone that can manage to bowl 3 strikes in a row (this is what a "turkey" is in bowling.) This medal changed hands 2 times in 5 minutes last week but trust me when I say that our group is not a 3 strikes in a row type group very often. Something magical just happened in that time period.
The world championship of Danang
Again, choices were very limited about what kind of belt we could get and I found a John Cena spinning belt replica out of China for a reasonable price. The way this is acquired is a bit more complicated.
We didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by having a ranking system so the way it works is that the Champion defends his belt every week against a random opponent that was present the week before. We stick everyone's names into a randomizer app and that's who he plays against the following week. These 2 guys get their own lane and are competing ONLY against one another. The average score of 2 back-to-back games determines the winner.
The funny thing about this competition is that so far everyone who has participated in the championship does considerably WORSE when they are in the competition than if they were just casually bowling like everyone else in attendance. In each of the 6 weeks that we have had this championship the people in the title contention have bowled worse than 50% of the others in attendance. I have been the champion once and I lost it the very first time I defended the strap. Since the choice of who is going for the belt is totally random, it could be a while before I get another shot at it.
I would imagine that a lot of you are not allowed to go bowling and for 3 weeks, that was the case for us as well and we really missed it. These days Thursday has become my favorite day of the week and I look forward to it more than any other day.
So what about you guys out there? Do you like the game? Are you any good at it?