Marshall Sutherland

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 21:17:02 -0400

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

The schedule for #skeeball week 6 is out. #4 Holey Rollers play the #7 The Bourgeouiskee. Our worst game (880) is better than their best game (829) . Hopefully, I can get my stuff together. With the exception of week 4, I've been going downhill all season. Near the end of last week's game, I finally got some insight into what I might be screwing up. I realized that early in the season, I was aiming for a point on the side rail, but not hitting it. It was weirding me out that I was rolling well while not hitting what I was aiming for. As I got better at hitting what I was aiming at, I rolled worse. In the last few frames last week, I "used the force" and went back to not hitting what I was aiming at and my last few frames were much better. I just need to go with the flow and let what works work.

skeeball

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Wed, 17 Jul 2024 09:19:42 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

338, congrats! What was your strategy?

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 13:00:38 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

Pretty much what I described in the original post, but maybe I can describe it better now that 1) it worked and 2) afterwards, I did some experimenting with an observer to see what was going on.

This season, I have been a "banker", which means I'm bouncing it off the side of the lane and having it target the center cups. On these lanes, there is a series of screws in the side rails which give you something to aim at. I'm going to guess there are 6 or 7 of them with the first and last being really close to the ends. I have been aiming for the 2nd from the top screw, but that is nowhere near where the ball is hitting the rail. At first, I thought "Well, of course, if I aim for that screw, the ball is going to hit before the screw because if the center of the ball is aimed for it, the edge of the ball will hit the rail before it gets there." It didn't take long to notice that the ball was hitting much further down that that. I've got my focus on that screw, so I have to try to notice where the ball is going in my peripheral vision. The fact that I was hitting my ultimate target while apparently not really aiming the ball was kind of weirding me out. "How can I control what i am doing if I have no aim???" I started to try to make the ball go where I wanted to. Of course, i could only improve if I had better control of where the ball was going, right? This season indicates otherwise, as I just got worse and worse (fortunately, still better than what I used to get up the middle the usual way).

The light bulb hit me near the end of last week's game. What I had been doing early in the season was letting the ball sort of roll off my right hand to the right as I rolled for the right rail. How could i possibly control it if is just rolling off my hand mid-roll??? I don't know, but somehow it works. My last two frames the previous week had been good. So, this week, I rolled a practice frame letting it just roll off as I described, and I scored a 36. I just stopped practice right there. it worked and I didn't want to screw myself up by over-thinking it. I only rolled one frame under 30 (a 28) all night.

So, after the match, we were hanging out and I asked my sister (who is visiting town and came with us) to watch what the ball was doing when I rolled this way. It is bouncing WAY down between the 2nd and 3rd screw from the bottom while I'm "aiming" for the 2nd screw from the top! After getting a good sense of where it was hitting, I aimed for that spot. It worked, but it actually pretty hard to aim for a spot so close. Given a lot of time to practice, I could probably come up with a place i could aim for and an angle to aim at it from where I could feel like I was doing this intentionally. In the long run, this would probably make me more consistent, but until I actually have time to work that out, I'm going to stick with this weird way that feels wrong but works. My mantra when rolling like this "just relax and go with the flow".

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:31:27 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

After getting a good sense of where it was hitting, I aimed for that spot. It worked, but it actually pretty hard to aim for a spot so close.

I would have to make sense of it as well, because in time there would be drift (at least for me) where what worked great would then eventually drift and fail and I wouldn't know why.