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Fri 31 Aug 2007
We arrived safe and sound a few days ago now. The journey started at 8:15am on Tuesday morning at the Delta check-in desk in Gatwick North terminal. We had no excess baggage issues as our balls had been shipped the week before so would be waiting for us on our arrival.
We first flew to Atlanta and had 3 hours in the airport before our connection. Just enough time for us all to grab some dinner. We met at the gate and were greeted by two ladies from Team Canada who had missed their connection so were on standby and hoping to make our flight. We all boarded and to our surprise took off leaving the two Canadian ladies behind even though there were seats available...
We arrived to a rainy Monterrey late on Tuesday night to find a big group of ladies here for the tournament waiting for the transport to the hotel. There was a crazy system at the airport where the bus could only stay in the pick up area for a short time before having to go and drive around the block to pick up another ticket. Crazy as the bus was half loaded up and had to drive around the block to come back to the exact same place to continue loading everyone on! We were lucky and were collected by a mini bus pretty quickly and in the hotel in 30 Min's. We went straight to our rooms and went to sleep ready to have an adventure around the area in the morning.
We woke up and went straight to breakfast which was a huge buffet of everything you could imagine. Then returned to the room, unpacked and went down to the bowling centre to have a bowl and loosen up a little. We were able to play on the patterns and to be honest they were very similar to what we had been laying down to practise at home. We then ventured to a huge shopping centre close to the bowl where we had some dinner and a quick look around the shops.
Today we pretty much did the same as yesterday, official practise is tomorrow and we will bowl at 10am so it will be an early start. We will be able to gauge the patterns properly tomorrow as we will play across the house and see how the pattern transitions a little better.
Sat 01 Sep 2007
Official practise went well for all of the team yesterday. The hardest part was deciding which six balls to register as we are limited to the amount of balls we are able to use. Most of the team had 7 or 8 balls which had a good reaction so I think the scoring pace is going to be high as most of the other teams probably had the same.
The balls I decided to register were the following:
Short Oil:
Dry Zone - drilled with a 2" pin
Fury Pearl - Pin above my ring finger and cg in centre of my palm.
Long Oil:
Strike Zone - drilled pin above ring finger and cg kicked out - out of the box surface.
Vapor Zone - drilled the same as Strike Zone.
Total Inferno - drilled the same as Fury Pearl.
and of course my Target Zone.
I bowl doubles at 1:30pm with Kirsten Penny, I'll let you know how it goes!
Jemma & Fiona bowl before us and Lisa & Katie bowl Sunday at 8am.
Sun 02 Sep 2007
Well the doubles are close to completion, the last squad is playing as we speak. Lisa John and Katie Jowsey are bowling now so fingers crossed they do brill! Jemma and Fiona bowled first yesterday and bowled pretty steady, shooting about 40 over as a pair.
FIONA BANKS 214-203-167-248-182-211 = 1225
JEMMA SMITH 188-203-225-149-199-243 = 1207
TOTAL = 2432
Kirsten and I bowled straight after and had a few problems first game shooting a very low first game, we just couldn't get a good reaction. After that we were pretty steady scoring around 440 every game. Except for the first the other pairs were similar to practice, carry is pretty tough in this centre so it was difficult to make up all the pins we had lost on the first game. We finished 100 over as a pair, leaders so far are Korea on an amazing 404 over! I guess they didn't have any carry issues
KIRSTEN PENNY 146-248-224-212-216-235 = 1281
ZARA GLOVER 160-195-233-192-231-215 = 1226
TOTAL = 2507
We bowl Trios at 12:30 and 16:30 today; I bowl first with Kirsten & Fiona, then Jemma, Lisa and Katie after. We bowl three games on the long today and three games on the short tomorrow. Hopefully we can keep up with the high scoring pace easier on the long!
Tue 04 Sep 2007
Well I wasn't that forthcoming in writing anything yesterday as I had a very bad day. The rest of the team did pretty well, the rest of my trios team had a blinding day thank goodness to make up for my performance. However today was another day!
We played team event on the short this morning and started off with a steady 975, again leaving lots of single pins. We then moved onto the end pair at the high end of the centre and it was a totally different story, we opened up with a very powerful start and it continued through the whole game. We had a lot better reaction to carry on this pair and nearly every pocket hit was a strike, not like we had been experiencing on all the other pairs... We just carried on one frame at a time and kept striking... Both Finny and Kirsten were both on for 300 after 8 frames and the rest of us only a few 9 counts behind them! Finny threw a 9 in the 9Th but Kirsten continued with her string of strikes. She nailed every single shot and finished with the second 300 game of the tournament - and very well deserved it was! The team finished on a huge 1261 game 252 average... an new World record by over 100 pins! The previous record had been set by the Danes the game before, showing how high scoring the short pattern could be!
The third game we were crossing with the Danes and we kept it together despite all the excitement shooting a steady game of 1074 keeping us safely in the lead with the Indonesians close behind on 3252. The USA, Korea & Sweden who have been the highest scoring teams so far in the tournament are bowling now.
FB 224 268 258 750
JS 152 219 181 552
ZG 196 259 191 646
LJ 203 215 243 661
KP 200 300 201 701
975 1261 1074 3310
Tomorrow we have three more games on the Long pattern so lets hope we can have a repeat performance!
Thu 06 Sep 2007
Well we had a very disappointing day yesterday, we started off steady with 1046, we had a good lane draw today seeing as we were top seeds and started off on lane 10 then moved across the house instead of changing ends. The next pair we were crossing with the USA and we were really out classed. They were playing as a unit, all in the same part of the lane breaking the pattern down and opening up the lane for each other, as soon as one of the girls balls hooked too much they all made the move. We really showed our lack of practise on these patterns as a team and failed to make the moves needed only shooting 904. The pattern really burned up this game and we struggled when forced to move deeper.
We had dropped to third position after that game as the Americans had a really big game and so did the Malaysians. We were still in contention for gold but needed a big last game to make up the pins we had dropped. We moved to the high end of the centre and to the World Record pair, unfortunately they hooked more on the long as they did on the short. We made the big move inside that we should have made the game before, but couldn't really get comfortable, leaving a few pocket splits and missing a few single pins. We crawled over the finish line with a low 937 and had to wait and watch the teams close behind us finish their games, they were all also struggling and we thought we had just managed to stay ahead of Indonesia. We then got wind of the Danes making a big push with 1099 to finish 5 pins behind us... We were very lucky to hold onto the Bronze medal... The first and second position was a real fight, Malaysia's Shalin Zulkifli made a 4-9 split in the 9th and needed to mark in the 10th for them to take gold. She did and they finished 7 pins in front of a very disappointed Team USA.
I hope we can all learn from this and hopefully in the future we will have better preparation for playing these patterns. We had not practised playing on the patterns in a five man team format and weren't prepared for how the pattern broke down. I think if we had as a team we would have played the long pattern differently and had some different ball selections than we had brought with us.
Still a bronze medal is still a great achievement, I think it might be the first team medal for England in a World Championships... Not sure... If it's not the first then it has been quite a while so we should be proud but hopefully learn and improve from our experiences!
After all the highs and lows of the team event I had to regroup and bowl the singles straight after... Not the greatest decision by the tournament organisers... There was a very bizarre atmosphere in the bowling centre when we started the singles event at 8pm. It felt more like practise, everyone was laughing and joking. I was bowling with Lisa and we had a great time, still scoring the same as we had the whole tournament not able to string any strikes together, but in the pocket the whole time. I finished on 1213, losing it a little in the last few games. Lisa finished strong shooting 1260 and that was our tournament over!
I finished the tournament 17 under, I felt like I bowled really well, made good shots and moves most of the time. I just couldn't work out how to carry, every ball I used from different parts of the lane had the same result... 9!!!! Never mind.. I have enjoyed my time in Monterrey and am looking forward to watching the rest of the girls Singles, hopefully they will shoot big and make the Masters!!!
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