Daddio: Practice is Important

Yesterday I bowled in my firm's third annual bowling tournament. Before I get into the details of how I did, let me begin by saying that I'm a horrible bowler. In the first tournament, I came in last place with a score of 74. In bowling, a 74 is awful, and because of my low score, I was mocked and ridiculed by my co-workers. Last year, because I switched jobs, I didn't bowl in the tournament.

So in preparation for this year's tournament, two weeks ago I went bowling with some guys from work to see how I'd do. I bowled a 43. A 43. Remember how I said a 74 was awful? Well a 43 is clearly much worse than that. After that experienced, I realized that there were two ways I could go with this: (1) don't practice at all and do really bad, which would be very funny and make everyone laugh; or (2) try to learn some basic pointers and practice more before the tournament. I decided to go with the second option.

So I watched a youtube video with advice for beginning bowlers. It gave basic, simple techniques on how to bowl-- how to hold the ball, how to aim, how to approach the lane, etc. I took this advice and went to practice... a lot. In the two weeks before the tournament, I went bowling four more times, each time bowling two games. The first time I went back, I only bowled a 66, which stunk, but I decided to keep trying. Remembering the basic techniques, my scores kept getting better and better. The last game I bowled before the tournament, I got a 143, my highest score ever-- and 100 points higher than the first practice game!

At the tournament last night, I did pretty well. I bowled a 123. Out of 15 participants, I took 4th. I was really happy with these results.

Practice is important.