Teesside take the Bronze

I'll start off blunt.

I bowled shit.

Really shit.

I only had two games that approached decent they being 178 and 171. It's a far cry from my hay day of 190's and 200's...

End of the day we somehow managed to do well enough to get third in the Quads division. While it's good to get a trophy I can't help but feel that I didn't really deserve it averaging only 153.7, I dread to think what my mum would think of it, the 165.4 I got last week was bad enough. What makes it worse is that in the singles event, an event I normally do well in, if not trophy-wise then personally at least, I did rubbish getting only a 138.3 average. It was so rubbish I did something I've never done during a tournament, I walked out of the alley (after all three games were played of course). I've never bowled so piss poor at a tournament that I've had to get away from it all. I don't know if the rest of the club noticed or not, they were watching me bowl, they know I was pissed of; one of them got half my bowling gear thrown at them as I was packing away. But I walked out of the alley, no one followed me, no one came looking (which is just as well because I wanted to be alone), no one said anything when I returned 10 minutes later.

Still I think it was the right thing to do, it gave me a chance to think about things, to calm down (I was ready to hit something). I eventually came to the conclusion that there was nothing else I could have done; everything I tried just didn't work. I'd move to the left and the ball wouldn't come back enough, I'd move to the right, and the ball would fly to far left of the lane, I moved my target and the ball would do silly things, it was always one thing or the other, there was no happy medium. Once I came to that line of thought things got less tense. I was able to focus on the last event, the main event the Quads (team of 4). 3 years ago we came 1st, 2 years ago we came 2nd, last year we came 3rd, I was damned if we were going to come fourth this year. I really wanted to win it, go out as I came in. The time alone gave me time to get my confidence back, to get revved up, eye of the tiger and all that.

And it worked for the first game at least, managing a 171 and scaring the team next to us half to death, my warrior cry after each strike, especially after the fourth one in a row, was quite loud and in your face, apparently. Still I think it helped the team, seeing their Captain so pumped and ready for the quads, we all did really well in the first game (relatively speaking). However it was not to last as my game started to slip again ending with a shit 142 game.

But we won a trophy. Which is good.

But I bowl crap. Which is bad.

Should I be happy at winning a trophy? I guess I should be but I don't feel it, I don't feel like I deserved it. I certainly didn't earn it, not with those scores. Yet somehow we managed to get a trophy.

I don't know.... maybe its time for me to hang up my bowling shoes and call it day. It's been a long time since I felt the hunger to actually bowl well, it's been a long time since I felt the need to prove to the world and to myself that I'm a good bowler. I know the reason why, I can't really say it because it's not a nice thing to say and I know their intentions were in the right place yet I still rue him for saying it.

I really wanted for this year to be like my first or second year, bowling really well and winning lots of trophies because of it. However after these last two tournaments I can't see it happening, the magic’s gone and I've not got enough time to find it before the next tournament. Maybe I'm just stuck in the past but the past was good, I was good. Now I'm just another mediocre bowler...

Not how I wanted things to end...

This is Benji Dude, asking you to take a walk in my shoes because you're probably better than me...