These days with everyone taking visa runs constantly and combined with the high level of illness that is going around at the moment results in us always being in danger of having not so many people turn up for our weekly DUMBO events.
This past week we had the lowest turnout in more than a year with only 11 people turning up for the lanes.
This is the first time in a while that we haven't needed to have the entire lanes dedicated to us and we only occupied the lanes that are closest to the entrance. It was kind of a trip down memory lane because in the beginning stages of DUMBO we only had 3 people that came at all. Then it got huge and then Covid happened and kind of wrecked our momentum. It turned out that this was actually a good thing because we were getting to the point where we had so many people coming on Thursdays that we were about to have to start to turn people away.
Myself and several of the other members have stated that we don't really care if anyone wants to go, we are going to do it anyway. I think a lot of the enthusiasm for the championship belts has kind of worn off on a lot of people and that was to be expected as well. In the beginning I was relatively dominant and it was all but guaranteed that I was going to win the championship each week. It has been a very long time since I was even eligible to compete for the belt and I don't really mind this. Of course I would like to be better but it is nice to have other people doing well also.
One thing that was kind of nice was that of the 11 people that attended, almost everyone was bowling well above their usual average and we had 5 people get more than 150 points in the first game. This almost never happens, especially when we have half as many people attending as we normally would.
The top score of the day set a new record for the men's division at 179 and the women's yearly record score was broken as well with a 148. I think everyone was pretty happy with their performance except for one person. There was just something magical about the lanes on Thursday and we were cheering quite frequently as the strikes and spares were just going down for everyone, including me.
We also had one new person turn up who bowls with a curve and really good accuracy. He looked as though with a bit of practice that he will be a top contender in the future. When we were chatting afterwards he told us that he used to bowl quite a lot in his younger years and his all time personal best score is 275. He better not bring that sort of talent to the division or we might have to kick him out. That's too good for us :)