Hogsharley

Ways to deter sandbaggers

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Hogsharley
, 08-20-2009 at 11:05 PM (14048 Views)
Sandbagging has been a problem for years in my area. I've seen people do some crazy things in order to get their averages down.

One guy I know sacrifices the entire 1st half of the season and then pours it on in the second half. He's also a PBA member.

Also there's this entire team that does it and it's so obvious but the rules make it so hard to inforce the sandbagging rules. This team will miss easy spares and as soon as their opponet misses or opens, they turn into a team of Pete Webers. If your team doesn't falter, they will keep on missing insuring themselves a nice low average.

The number one way our league deter sandbagging is inforcing a pin drop rule whereas your entering cannot drop more than 5 or 10 pins. The most you can sandbag is those 5 or 10 pins. We also have an entering average of 160. If someone averages lower than 160, they will only recieve handicap pins based on a 160 average.

Also in our match point league we have a match point for individual series point. If a sandbagger throws only one game, he may also be throwing away the match point for series.

Another way to for the league to do a Peterson Point System. This system makes every pin count. If you throw away pins, your only hurting yourself.

The best and only true way to stop sandbagging is to have a scratch league but sandbaggers don't bowl in scratch leagues.

The league should also have an re-rate committee. If someone expects a bowler to be sandbagging, they can go to the committee and ask them to look into the situation.

There is no way to totally stop sandbagging but the above can hopefully slow it down.

Anyone have any other ways. I would love to hear them.

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  1. Maine Man's Avatar
    Those are some good ideas you have there Hogs, but I have a few more that may help also:

    1) Go to less than 100% handicap for the league. I would suggest going to 80% to be honest, but both of the leagues I bowl in settled on 90%. This way, the lower you average, the more pins of handicap you lose to the higher average bowlers. There is less incentive to sandbag, and more incentive to get better, if you know you are getting less pins for doing it.

    2) Institute a handicap "cap" for the league. One of my men's leagues has the cap set at 50 pins. Even if you average low enough to get more pins, the max you can have is 50. This is another safe guard against sandbagging.

    Like you said Hogs, there is no fool-proof way to stop sandbagging short of scratch leagues with no average caps. But, hopefully with the ways you stated, and the ones I have mentioned, we see that there are those of us who care enough about the integrity of the game of bowling to defend it. Thanks, and take care!

    -James (Maine Man)
  2. Hogsharley's Avatar
    We do have a handicap cap of 72 pins based on the 160 average and we also have a 90% of 240 handicap. If you go 80% or 85% you give too much of an advantage to the higher average bowlers.

    Thanks for your imput James.