Team X-Calibur - Swedish League

http://www.x-calibur.se/

Well I had a great weekend this weekend with the Swedish girls. I have been asked to play for the Swedish League team X-Calibur. I was really excited about playing league as we don't have any team events really in the UK anymore and I have always loved to play team event! All my best memories of bowling are team tournaments, it's always so much nicer to share success with your team mates!

I had a really early start on Saturday morning, leaving home at 4:30am to drive to Heathrow. My flight was at 7:15am and I slept the entire flight until I arrived in Stockholm at 10:45am. I was greeted at the airport by Tina Gustafzon and together we drove to the hotel to check in. At the hotel I met the rest of the girls and sorted out all my team shirts etc.

Meet the girls!

I felt like I was instantly welcomed into the team! We bowled the first match at 2:15 on the Saturday and the girls were reallt up for the match as it was against one of the strongest teams in the league Spada Dam. They haven't lost a match in 18 months, we gave it our all and were so close to changing that record, unfortunately we had a bad last game and ended the match 11 - 9 to Spada Dam.

L-R: Tina, Me, Sanna & Nina

The format is great, you play 8 man team at doubles pace across 8 pairs of lanes. 1 point for each doubles win per pair and 1 point for the team total so 5 points per game. The scores from each pair are displayed as + or - on the bottom of every screen so everyone is following each pair of lanes and cheering for each other.

We all went back to the hotel got showered and went for a nice dinner.

On Sunday we had two matches. One at 9am and another at 2:15 we won both of those matches only dropping 5 points across the 2 matches and set a new team record. We really came together and got to grips with the lane conditions. I bowled doubles with Diana, we were playing a similar part of the lane so it was good to get a read from each other.

The bowling centres was amazing, one of the oldest centres I have ever bowled in...

Check out the pictures for yourself!

Tilburg EBT stop part 2

Well I didn't get much better this weekend. My highest block was 1259 and the tournament was so busy I couldn't get into a squad on Saturday. The waiting lists were 50 people long.

So back to the drawing board. I still haven't got the dual pattern short and long sorted out. I felt like I had my ball arsenal sorted for this tournament. After practising on different short and long patterns at home I was confident. But yet again I had real under over problems on the short. The long I have a pretty good look on now, but the short is a problem for me. Weird as naturally my game matches up to playing the outside of the lane better.



Back to the drawing board and the practise lane!

For Tilburg full results click HERE


My next EBT tournament will be Barcelona on the last weekend of this month. Before then I have a team England training day and I am going to Sweden to play their national league.



I have joined team X-Calibur who play out of Gothenburg. I have heard many stories of how much fun their league is so I'm really looking forward to it!





Z xxx

Tilburg EBT stop

Well this weekend I'm in Tilburg. We set off down to Dover on Wednesday night, to get the 8am ferry on Thursday. Unfortunately the ferry was delayed by an hour but we finally got to France by midday. The crossing was very calm thank goodness, I'm not very good on boats!



Once off the ferry we had a 3 hour drive through France, then Belgium and into The Netherlands. We arrived at the Dolfijn bowling centre around 3pm then checked into the hotel to get a bit of rest before I bowled at 9pm.



This tournament has different conditions to normal. Every left lane has a long oiling pattern and every right lane a short pattern. So thank goodness it is in a location within driving distance of the UK, I wouldn't have liked to try and get 10 balls on a plane!



I wasn't really on my game last night, in hindsight I shouldn't have really bowled. With two different conditions you have to really concentrate on what is going on and I really wasn't feeling alert enough after driving all day, and my scores reflected that! I got the opportunity to bowl all the equipment I brought and decide which balls looked the best ready for my squad today.



I have just got off the lanes now after a very frustrating six games. I felt like I bowled well and only made one bad decision on following the lane breakdown. But every slight mistake I made I was punished to the maximum. I think I have sorted out the problem now though as I had 257 last game using a Vapor Zone on the long and Fury Pearl on the short. I finished up only 59 over for the block, but I am pretty hopeful for my next squad tonight at 9pm.



Zara xx

Tali Bowling Centre – Helsinki Finland

This tournament is renowned for being the toughest tournament of the calendar, primarily due to the standard and quantity of Finish bowlers that take part each year. I didn’t have the pleasure of visiting the centre before they had a massive re-fit three years ago. This enormous centre used to have tiered seating all through the centre and the stories that I hear about atmosphere and excitement of finals held there make me wish I had had the opportunity to compete. Since the re-fit there is only a small amount of the tiered seating left in, but the atmosphere there is still something special all through the event. It is a real honour to compete in front of such a knowledgeable crowd.

I arrived in a not so cold Helsinki on Thursday afternoon and chose to observe the squad and get a game plan together ready for the squad I had on Friday. The lanes as usual looked tough but pretty fare. I watched the squad and then went back to the hotel with the English contingent taking part in the tournament to get some rest. Friday morning came and I felt pretty confident. I have made a lot of changes to my game during the period I took off tournament play at the end of the year, and although I don’t feel like I’m back at 100% yet, I am most certainly on the way.

After two games of the squad it was obvious I had the wrong surfaces on my equipment and really had no ball reaction, so I spent the rest of the squad trying different equipment in different parts of the lane. I was having a joke with one of the Finish guys bowling next to me as we were both not scoring so highly. We decided to make a bet for the last game for a drink, to make it more interesting and luckily for me I found a great reaction on the last pair of lanes shooting a 290 game out of no where… Very amusing and I most definitely won the bet!

In the break I took the surface off most of my equipment to try and find a better match up and re-entered in the next squad. I had a much better ball reaction, but physically didn’t feel right and made some bad decisions which cost me. I didn’t score enough to make the cut so went back to the hotel again to rest up and decide what to do the day after.

On the Saturday I had a pretty good reaction with the surfaces I had on Friday and bowled physically very well. Unfortunately I just couldn’t get to the score needed to make the cut. My highest finish was 1306 but the cut ended up being 1332.

For full results click HERE