Published: September 11, 2008 11:01 am      

Bittner’s 741/263 starts new season

Eric Bittner rolled a 741/263 at The Bowler and was the area’s scoring leader for the start of the 2008-2009 bowling season. Corey Shirey was the next highest at that center rolling 726/257 followed by A.J. Bishop’s 724/257.

At White Oak Lanes, Jim Helminiak was the leader scoring 734/257. Jeremiah Howsare bowled 726/247 and Don Parsons rolled 686/242.

Among the lady bowlers, Crystal Uhl started the season rolling 601/225. Vicki Coughlin followed scoring 569/201 then Dawn House posting a 562/195 score.

Betty Gable’s 579/215 was highest of the White Oak ladies. Felicia Deremer was next rolling 578/246 followed by Mary King’s 530/196.

Ray Foster claimed top senior honors starting this new bowling season by bowling 666/227 at The Bowler. Don Bower rolled 564/220 and Margie Anderson scored a 503 set.

Pat Logsdon was highest of the White Oak seniors bowling 518/203. Bess Hudgins scored 469/178.

Welcome back for a new season of local bowling news and as usual, comments and discussion of bowling related issues.

This last week, I interviewed Kevin Mansfield, the new owner/propietor of Rainbow Lanes and during a discussion he brought up an interesting point that may be of general interest to readers of this column.

Mansfield thinks that bowling lost a whole generation of bowlers because of the very popular state of the sport in the 70’s. He reasoned that because of the full house for the league bowlers, there was no room for open bowling thus the sport failed to get the usual influx of open bowlers into the leagues. Further he believes that many of that generation who are in their 30’s and 40’s are now having the chance at open bowling and are or will soon be wanting to join a league.

I tend to agree that his reasoning is valid for many areas of the country and it does apply to some degree locally. One of the reasons for this discussion is because I wanted to assure those new bowlers in the leagues that they certainly are welcome.

Open bowlers have the false idea that they aren’t good enough bowlers to be joining a league. That is normally true for joining a scratch league, however most of the leagues are handicap leagues and in those leagues the “new” bowler has an advantage and teams improve their winning percentage when they get new bowlers with little experience.

The handicap system used is based on the difference of your average and a percentage of an assumed highest league average. That percentage is usually about 85 percent but can be 100 percent in some leagues. The advantage for a new bowler is that the handicap is cumulative from week to week. At the beginning of the season his/her average is normally low, assume it’s 100 (the average for three games bowled at the season start). Near the end of the season with a steady rise in his/her ability and average that average for the three games bowled climbed to 180. Because the average used for scoring is cumulative, the average used for handicap calculation would only be 140 thus you would be consistently bowling above your average which obviously improves the winning percentage of your team.

You may have some trouble understanding the handicap system. I would suggest that you talk to your league secretary and determine how your league calculates the handicap value. Try some examples of a bowler through a shortened season (try 10 weeks) and prove to yourself that the new bowler really does give their team an advantage.

Good luck bowling and have fun striking out!

Howard “Pete” Peterson is the bowling columnist for the Cumberland Times-News. You can reach him at petesbowling@atlanticbb.net.