Missy Parkin's Blog: Missy Wins WBA Queens Tournament

This past weekend I bowled in the Women’s Bowling Alliance Queens tournament in Henderson, NV at Sunset Station Lanes. We bowled on the Kegel “Winding Road” lane pattern and it proved to be pretty difficult, as the condition put a premium on shot making and picking up spares was crucial.

We bowled two 5-game blocks of qualifying, taking an hour lunch break in between sets. I started out using my 900 Global Black Eagle, playing 13 with a little swing. As the oil pushed down the lane, I then straightened out my angles a bit and just kept moving left as the day went on. My strategy was to find a ball that would keep me out of trouble, another words, a ball that was controllable and that would allow me to leave makeable spares, and not splits, when I missed the pocket. I used the Black Eagle for the first two games, shooting 200 and 248 and then switched to my solid 900 Global The Nuts for the rest of the set shooting 193, 248 and 248 for +137 the first 5 games.

We then took a break for lunch and I was leading after the first 5 game block. The lanes were not re-oiled for our next set. I continued to use my 900 Global The Nuts and then switched to my re-release new AMF Bullwhip during game 7 and started to open up my angles a bit more. I shot 245, 197, 214, 224 and 243 for +260 overall for the 10 games of qualifying. I averaged 226 and was leading by 60 pins after qualifying. The field was then cut to the top 8 players.

On Sunday, we bowled 8 games of round robin matchplay with 30 bonus pins awarded to the winner of each match. I again used my 900 Global Black Eagle, The Nuts and AMF Bullwhip shooting scores of 254, 196, 226, 236, 202, 214, 224 and 208 to secure a 7-1 matchplay record and win the tournament by 149 pins over Hall of Famer Robin Romeo. I was very happy with my performance as the lanes were rather challenging, especially on Sunday when the heads broke down and the backends got pretty tight down lane. My low game for the entire tournament was 193 and I didn’t miss ANY single pin spares as well as makeable spares for the entire tournament and I picked up quite a few big splits on Sunday. All in all it was a great weekend! Along with the prize money, I won a tiara, trophy, an entry into the 2013 USBC Queens tournament, a bottle of WBA wine and pretty flowers.

I’d like to thank Paula Vidad and the entire Women’s Bowing Alliance staff for all of their hard work in putting together these tournaments! I hope some of you tuned in the to LIVE streaming of the event.

For complete results and more information on this and other upcoming WBA tournaments, click here.