Abe Lincoln Invitational Tournament

Better, is the word that best describes how I feel about the Abe Lincoln Invitational Tournament last Saturday. We started strong with 903, high 800 and another 900, then we ate lunch...

Had that only been a 3 game event, we would have had strong 3rd place very close to second. We were just 80 pins from second place at that point. What an excellent place to be at half-time. Even during our lunch Holly won the Strike Queen contest. I thought that for sure would keep us energized through the rest of the tournament.

After lunch we struggled, lanes started drying out, we got tired, one of our players got hurt, our attitudes were down, (don't forget to re-read Coach Tapscotts Attitude is everything post.) and again we looked like that defeated team that I portrayed in my last post about the Collinsville. By the end of the 6th game, our team dropped down to 5th place. Missing 4th place by one single pin. Now, thinking back, there were a lot of placed we could have picked up a single pin. Think of the spare we missed, think of the split we left where we tried for it but chucked it in the gutter, think of a mental blunder where we missed the head pin on our first ball after a spare. Just remember, you never know when you will need that single pin!

So, two points to come out of the Abe Lincoln Tournament, first, every pin counts. And, secondly our attitudes and team dynamics are holding us back.

I want all our bowlers to know how important of a role positive attitudes play in our game. Experts agree that positive attitudes fill in the gap of mental and physical errors. Meaning, the positive atmosphere that the team cohesively makes keeps a player up after she makes one of those silly mistakes drastically increasing the chances that the next ball will be better. I've witnessed this phenomenon time and time again where a team actually lifts a players spirits after a bad shot helping them with their next.

Hopefully a team leader will emerge and will help energize and start and maintain the positive team atmosphere that we need.

Remember, we are a team and we win as a team and lose as a team.