I’m a bit late with this post….considering that the actual event took place ALMOST a month ago, but better late than never right? RIGHT?

So, on 16 August 2014, I spent the morning at the Ten Pin bowling alley at the Zone in Rosebank along with some of my social media tweeps and some professional ten pin bowlers.  We took part in an invitation Pro-Am tournament called The Predator Cup.  It was the first time the pros decided to have an event like this and I think they did a spectacular job.  Not only did we get to have a really fun morning, but each amateur was spoiled with a brand new pair of bowling shoes and our beverage of choice from Vida (this alone makes the day a winner in my books).

It was lovely to see some of my favourite social media people again, and as always, pretty awesome to meet some new ones.  Each amateur was paired with a Central Gauteng league player…..some of whom have also played for South Africa.

I was lucky enough to be paired up with Leigh…..who is not only a fantastic ten pin bowling player, but also a genuinely nice guy.  The pros were tasked with coaching their individual amateurs before and during the tournament and of course to help keep the team average as high as possible, just in case the amateurs sucked.

There were two competitions running at the same time….the first one was an elimination: EAch team played a total of 3 games.  During the first round only the top 8 teams qualified, during the second round only the top 4 of the previous 8 qualified and during the 3rd round they determined which two teams would play in the final.  The nice part was that even though some teams were eliminated during the first round already, they kept on playing and finished all 3 rounds and the information was needed for the second competition, being the Marathon.  For the marathon they counted all the scores from each round and determined which team scored highest pin fall overall.

It was a lot of fun AND my team-mate and I won BOTH events!! We managed to get to the final where we battled it out with Quint and Jo to finally lift the Trophies AND we scored the highest pin fall overall too.  We are officially #TeamAwesome.

We learned a lot about the actual game too.  In professional bowling you have to wait for the person next to you to finish bowling before stepping on the lane to bowl in order not to disturb them and whenever someone makes a really good shot (and even sometimes when they don’t) everyone on that lane gives them a high 5.

The Central Gauteng guys also have weekly leagues and they offer coaching.  So should you guys be interested you should go to their site and give them a call.  It’s a really fun and social sport and I suspect we’ll be doing social bowling way more often…..maybe next year I’ll even be able to convince some of the social media guys to form a team for one of the fun leagues??

Love
Ruby
xxxxx