Saturday, July 08, 2006
A great surprise
7/7/06
Today was the five-man team event, but since we didn't bring a full team -- nor were there enough to field a Rest of the World team -- we merely bowled for our individual scores to be used in the all-events standings. Sadly, Josh, David, Emil, and I, along with our pacer, would have actually done very well in the tournament, finishing second behind the Israelis.
I continued my average bowling, finishing with an 1186, for a 24-game total of 4778, a 199 average. On the positive side, each of my set were very consistent; unfortunately, they were not the quality scores I was shooting for. I did finish 5th in the all-events standings, which is an accomplishment unto itself, so I guess there is a bright side.
As I predicted earlier, some of the notable names would be at the top of the leaderboard. Moshe ran away with the all-events, averaging almost 220 for the 24 games. Adam placed second, followed by Josh.
I mentioned earlier that Israel took the team event and really held the lead all day. Australia took a silver and the Australian Development team (think of it as JV) took bronze. For the Develoment team, these games area great experience for them, not only bowling in an interational tournament but haing the opportunity to bowl a long-format tournament.
On the women's side, the Rest of the World team bested the Australian team.
We finally got back to the hotel around 5:45 p.m. and barely had time to get ready for Shabbat services, which were held at the hotel. The service was pretty uninspiring; very little was explained or sung, which may have helped engage some of the service attendees. It's tough to bring together Jews from different backgrounds and levels of understanding and throw them into a service with little explanation or engagement. You can only imagine the talking that was going on behind the mechitza.
Today was the five-man team event, but since we didn't bring a full team -- nor were there enough to field a Rest of the World team -- we merely bowled for our individual scores to be used in the all-events standings. Sadly, Josh, David, Emil, and I, along with our pacer, would have actually done very well in the tournament, finishing second behind the Israelis.
I continued my average bowling, finishing with an 1186, for a 24-game total of 4778, a 199 average. On the positive side, each of my set were very consistent; unfortunately, they were not the quality scores I was shooting for. I did finish 5th in the all-events standings, which is an accomplishment unto itself, so I guess there is a bright side.
As I predicted earlier, some of the notable names would be at the top of the leaderboard. Moshe ran away with the all-events, averaging almost 220 for the 24 games. Adam placed second, followed by Josh.
I mentioned earlier that Israel took the team event and really held the lead all day. Australia took a silver and the Australian Development team (think of it as JV) took bronze. For the Develoment team, these games area great experience for them, not only bowling in an interational tournament but haing the opportunity to bowl a long-format tournament.
On the women's side, the Rest of the World team bested the Australian team.
We finally got back to the hotel around 5:45 p.m. and barely had time to get ready for Shabbat services, which were held at the hotel. The service was pretty uninspiring; very little was explained or sung, which may have helped engage some of the service attendees. It's tough to bring together Jews from different backgrounds and levels of understanding and throw them into a service with little explanation or engagement. You can only imagine the talking that was going on behind the mechitza.
About 20 of the bowlers decided to go off-site for dinner together and had a great evening out. When we returned to the hotel for a brief drink at the bar, we were happily greeted by our Shabbat Surprise -- Tony Aarons and Dan Zalcman. They both bowled for Australia last year in Israel but were unable to come to these games due to work commitments. We were all excited to see them and can only wait to see what the rest of the weekend will hold with them around :)
# posted by Matthew Halpern @ 11:23 PM 
