Follow Your Dreams
Aspiration is another word for a dream. The definition of aspiration is a hope or ambition of achieving something. Here is a sample sentence using the word aspiration. “His greatest aspiration is to win a PBA title.” Synonyms for aspiration include desire, hope, dream, wish, longing, yearning, aim, ambition, expectation, goal, and target. How can you use your aspirations and turn them into reality?
Write Your Goal(s) Down!
First decide what your goal is and write it down! This should be the driving force that you aspire to achieve. Then you need to truthfully assess your current position relative to that goal. Set up a set of benchmarks, or shorter-term goals that form a ladder to enable you to reach your ultimate goal. So what type of goals could you set for yourself? You could be a beginning bowler looking to improve by 10-20 pins. You could be an intermediate-level bowler looking to break into tournament play and eventually win an event. Let’s look at the tournament opportunities available in this area.
Goals for Developing Bowlers
Your first goal might just be to gain 20 pins in average in your league. So read on and I’ll give you some ideas about putting a plan together!
If you want to start to bowl tournaments, the USBC offers City, State and National championship events that have a team, doubles and singles event. The city and state tournaments are primarily handicap events and would be great events in which to participate!
The Amateur Bowlers Tour (ABT) provides bowlers from 150-225 an opportunity to compete for money. The ABT bowls on challenging conditions and includes a handicap system that evens the field as you become more successful. ABT has multiple divisions across the country and bowlers who participate regularly are eligible to compete in national events held multiple times each year.
Many local centers have tournaments geared to intermediate level bowlers. There is no excuse for getting your first taste of competition!
Tournaments for Higher Level Bowlers
Most areas either have a local tournament club or have a series of tournaments like Masters qualifying events that offer bowlers the chance to compete in scratch competition against the best bowlers in the area. These tournaments are an excellent stepping stone to national-level competition. These tournaments are usually contested on challenging conditions.
The USBC National championship events have a team, doubles and singles event. These events give you an annual opportunity to test your skills against all competitors. USBC also conducts their annual Masters and Queens tournaments.
For youth bowlers, the Mile Hi Tour offers terrific competitive opportunities against the best youth players in Colorado and surrounding areas. Youth bowlers are rewarded in the form of scholarship money. Some players earn more than $10,000 during their youth bowling days applicable toward post high school education.
Finally, there are a number of local tournaments offering everything from a monthly no-tap event at Holiday Lanes to Masters and Queens Qualifiers offered at a number of sites across the state.
Tournaments for Elite Bowlers
The ultimate competitive level, the PBA, offers the highest level of competition against the best players in the world.
I have bowled in somewhere around 17 Masters tournaments in my career. They represent a great annual test of your skills against the best professional and amateur players in the world. The Queens tournament offers the same opportunity for women to compete against the best players from around the world.
Finally, there are the PBA and PWBA tours. These professional tours offer competition against the best of the best on a regular basis. Both tours now offer Regional tournaments, which are shorter format less expensive ways to test your skills. These tournaments are the ultimate test of your ability!
Tournaments for Elite Senior Bowlers
Many areas also offer scratch competition to bowlers over the age of 50. This tournament allows senior players a chance to test their skills against the best in the area. You can also try your skills in the USBC Senior Masters against 300+ of the best senior players in the world. Even for players over 60 there are both national and senior competitive events. These events give those players who worked for a living but had or developed their competitive skills to compete against great players (some of them Hall of Fame players).
Team USA
At both the youth and adult levels, competitions are held to select the rosters for Team USA. The selected players earn the opportunity to compete for your country. It doesn’t get any better than that! So, once you set a goal for yourself, how can you break this into a series of achievable steps? It helps to separate bowling skills into physical, mental and tactical. The physical skills define your ability to deliver a bowling ball. Mental skills define your ability for your mind to allow your body to perform optimally. The tactical skills define how well you can use your physical game to be successful.
How You Prepare for Success
You will need to develop your skills so that they are as good as the players in the tournaments you enter. One way to start this list is to ask people what qualities successful players have, followed by a list of the skills that you need to work on to reach that level. From this, you can construct a skills gap – a list that will guide you on your journey to your goals.
From this skills gap assessment, you can build practice plans to develop the skills you lack. These practice plans need to give you a clear road map of how you are going to spend your practice time. When possible, make the practices fun and create games that will keep you engaged in your practices. Include drills that will isolate the areas you want to improve, and then be diligent in your practice of these drills.
Don’t just sit on the sidelines practicing until you have perfected the skills you believe you need. Set a timetable during which you will compete in events that will test your ability and refine your goals. Set a schedule for your competitions to give yourself motivation to practice. Set a schedule for your practices to keep you on pace to achieve your goals.
Learning Your Game
Now that we are a point where the student has goals but needs to put together a plan to achieve those goals. So, let’s put together a player who has these goals.
Our bowler has bowled almost exclusively on house shots, averages 195-200 and has the following “personal” bowler variables.
Joe’s Personal Bowler Variables
PAP 4 ½ ->, 1 1/4 ^
Rev Rate 250
Speed 17.5 MPH
Axis Rotation 70 degrees
Axis Tilt 17 degrees
Release Ratio 3.36
Recent USBC research gives a new concept – release ratio. This number is the ratio between the speed at which the ball comes off your hand and the “spin speed” – think of rev rate, off your hand. This ratio provides a way to describe the traits a bowler should be aware of so that they use their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. For example, Joe’s 3.36 release ratio translates to the following general information about this player:
- Has a tougher time getting the ball to slow down enough on heavier volumes or harder lane surfaces
- Medium to low (direct) launch angles
- Tends to bowl better on “breakdown”
- Needs surface on fresh “sport bowling” type patterns
- Prefers more surface early in blocks (500-2000) depending on surface hardness
This is valuable information for Joe, as he can tailor his arsenal to his tendencies and strengths. At the same time, we need to use this information to help Joe become a better bowler. I have a spreadsheet that you and your coach can fill out to get this information.
Make a Plan
Giving Joe a slight increase in rev rate to 275-300 will allow him to better match up to most lane conditions. Since Joe has never bowled on sport shots he will need to learn the basics of sport bowling conditions. Joe wants to bowl in scratch competition. To do that he needs to have a plan to get there.
Joe’s physical goals will be:
1. Improve spare shooting to 90%+ on all simple spares.
2. Increase rev rate slightly (by about 25-50 RPM)
3. Increase accuracy
Joe’s mental goals will be:
1. Perform when bowling against the best local players.
2. Maintain his swing on sport conditions.
Joe’s tactical goals will be:
1. Knowing how to line up to short, medium, and long patterns.
2. Knowing how sport patterns break down.
Now, there will be more that Joe will need to learn as he improves his ability to bowl on sport patterns.
This will form a great start to learning how to compete in scratch competition.
Now Joe needs a development plan. This is an overall plan for what Joe will do to get better. Over the
next three months, Joe will:
1. Practice 10-25 games per week
2. Physically condition his body to increase stamina and strength
These practices will be:
1. Practice 1: Increase rev rate and improve mental composure.
a. Maximize rev rate for a practice by doing foul line drills and release drills outside the
lanes.
2. Practice 2: Bowl on sport conditions.
a. Learn the fundamentals of bowling on sport patterns.
b. Get practice time on short, medium, and long sport patterns.
c. Practice getting lined up on each category of pattern.
3. Practice 3: Develop mental composure
a. Bowl with others on sport patterns
b. Practice making ball and line changes with confidence
c. Roll play situations like needing a mark to make a cut.
Joe will also need a competition plan. He needs to plan to bowl in a tournament on a sport condition once he feels that he has learned to be more accurate, learns the basics of bowling on sport patterns and feels that he can line up to a sport pattern and follow the changes. At this point Joe will need to get tournament
experience to sharpen his skills and learn where the holes are by actual competition.
This small example shows you how you need to take a holistic approach to sharpening your bowling skills. Just learning to improve your physical game alone will not get you to where you want to be in competing against experienced tournament bowlers. You must also gain knowledge about bowling on sport patterns and you must develop mental skills that will allow you to compete under the stress of making great shots under demanding conditions when you need a shot to make a cut, or hopefully to win a tournament. These skills can not all be developed in practice – you will need to test your skills periodically in competition.
After all, isn’t that the goal of the hard work you’re putting in?