Last Thursday was championship night for the IBM Bowling League. Since the format of the final night changed from 2 teams to 4 teams a few years ago, our team has not won the league. The new format features 4 of the 8 teams all bowling against each other in a battle of total pin-count across 3 games. Obviously, heads up is easier to win since you only have to be better than 1 other team on a given night.
We bowled pretty well through two games, but another team was just bowling better. We found ourselves down by 91 pins to that team and ourselves well ahead of the other 2 teams. So basically we needed to make up those pins in the final game to win it all. A couple of HUGE performances from Matt (220 with a 157 average) and Chris (240 with a 190 average) really helped and we found ourselves winning total pins by 22 pins! And so we've finally made it back to the champions' pedestal, our 4th championship in about 8 years of bowling.
Once we wrapped up the victory, I drove my way to Las Vegas to get ready for the APA 8-Ball Southwest Challenge. I made the decision to bowl first then leave, instead of missing bowling altogether. That turned out to be a key decision since had I not shown up, our team would've had -30 from me missing the night and we would've lost by 8 pins. In other words, staying to bowl and leaving Tucson late was totally worth it!
Southwest Challenge:
Chris and I arrived at the Riviera in Las Vegas at 4:30am on Friday morning. Tyler had gotten in around midnight, so fortunately he was able to check us in early in the morning at 7am (yeah, fuck that shit) and attend the players' meeting for us at 8:30am. We also got lucky, receiving a first round bye and not having to play our first match until 2pm as opposed to 9am. Chris and I were able to salvage some valuable extra hours of sleep before hitting up an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurant for lunch before our 2pm match.
Friday night was fairly low key since we had to be up early. Chris, Tyler, Tyler's girlfriend Tina, and I walked down to the Palazzo to do some gambling. The whole night we kept our Cereal Killer shirts on and got several comments and questions...almost too many LOL. Chris and I played some blackjack back at the Riviera and called it a night around 1am.
I manned up and woke up at 7am to go to our 8am match against a team from Las Vegas. Tyler lead things off against a 5 but lost, and unfortunately I didn't play well enough to beat a 4. We were hence eliminated from the tournament and had we just this one match, we would've finished in the money (around $50 for each of us). Oh well, it was still a lot of fun and I would surely go again!
The rest of the time in Vegas was just partying it up. It was Tina's 30th birthday and the U of A Wildcats beat the Ohio State Buckeyes. We pretty much drank all day and eventually made our way out to Fremont street. The rest of the night was a little bit of a blur as we kept the drinking going on and I actually forgot to eat dinner. Whoops!
So far 2015 is off to a great start, and it's gonna be a great year!
