Author: Andrew Mullikin

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Thumb Problems

Well this week didn’t go as planned, I was suppose to bowl a tournament today but I was practicing on Wednesday and my thumb ended up blistering up. Instead of bowling I watched our men’s team bowl in one of the biggest tournaments of the year. The Hoosier Classic is one of the hardest tournaments to bowl in just because the pattern is so tricky and difficult. They ended up bowling really well and are currently in first place, this tournament other than nationals is the tournament everyone wants to win.

This is what my thumb looked like after practice and the reason why I wasn’t able to go bowl a tournament.

Right now we are currently in 2nd place in the nation and with a win in this tournament it would be hard to not see us in 1st. Although rankings don’t really mean anything other than making sectionals which we should make easily, it is a sort of bragging right and show people how powerful of a program we actually are. One of the things that a lot of people don’t realize is that we are a D3 school and non of us are getting athletic scholarships. We actually pay to be on the team and we are the highest ranked team in the nation that is a club and D3.

People really sleep on our program because we don’t have big name players that everyone knows in the bowling world. If you look at a team like McKendree they have players that bowl PBA, have been successful and 2 players that traveled the world bowling for our country. We are ahead of that team and they have players that are suppose to be better than our team. The team chemistry that we have is insane and when they are bowling they all look like one unit and man do they perform when its needed. Tomorrow is the last day and they will bowl baker games, then they will make a cut and then its brackets after that. Hopefully the team can come out with a win and bring home some shiny hardware.

 

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Last Tournament

I had my last tournament of the season this past weekend and I did rather well, which I am very happy about. I ended up averaging 205 for 5 games and bowled all day Sunday which is just amazing for me considering how my season has gone this year. This tournament meant a lot just because one of my best friends is graduating and I won’t be able to bowl with him like this ever again. His mom and his family has helped me a lot these past 2 years and without him I don’t really know where I would be right now. He is going to continue his season and bowl at nationals and I couldn’t be happier for him. He helped me last year a lot with me personal issues and last year was by far my best year for bowling and easily the hardest year personally of my entire life.

I had a lot of personal issues last year that hindered my performance and really kept me back from reaching my full potential. This year was a little different in the sense that my issues were a lot better but over the summer I developed extremely painful back problems. I had 2 X-Rays done as well as an MRI, everything came back fine with no required surgery’s. I still had pain and it was painful to bowl, I had bulging discs and it was hindering my performance over the summer.

Most of the time I would practice maybe 5 times a week but over the summer I was only bowling once a week because I physically couldn’t bowl. I was fine once I got back to school but when I moved in it started to hurt again, I had try outs and everything was super sore and painful. I ended up going to practice and tweaked it and couldn’t bowl the first tournament. Every year it seems like I have some issues going on whether it be mental or physical. I couldn’t focus at all this year and my drive and passion to bowl went down the drain. Practice seemed like a chore and not enjoyable all year.

Once I came back from winter break I had a moment of truth and came back with a positive mindset and started to work on my game hard. By then it was to late because my stats were so terrible that it wasn’t going to be saved in time for post season. Last year I had some of the highest stats as well as one of the highest averages on our team. I ended up this year in the middle of the pack for everything, I missed more single pin spares in 1st semester than I did all last year.

The drive to get better wasn’t there like I use to have it, but this last tournament was an extreme confidence booster for me. The varsity team has the Hoosier this weekend and come back for sectionals and nationals as well as club nationals. I can’t wait to get back into bowling like I use to be and find that drive to basically live in a bowling alley because I am there so much. I have a tournament this weekend in Illinois so tune in this weekend to see my results!