Best of luck and try to have fun!
I have stopped bowling local house tournaments. Used to be something I would do weekly as there is usually a tournament locally each week. There has been an influx of "non-local" bowlers coming in from outside associations as well as regional PBA members participating in no-tap tournaments, handicap house shot tournaments, or other fun format tournaments. It is kind of frustrating to go in, bowl very well, only to lose to a PBA card holder who bowls 1200 across 4 games of a no-tap tournament and then wipes the floor with other bowlers during the finals. The other "non-local" bowlers come in with 180-190 averages, but consistently average 230-240 at our house. Coincidence or "average management"? Who knows, but kind of suspicious. I had a handful of top 3 finishes but finally decided the hundreds of dollars spent on entry fees would be better spent elsewhere.
In any event, I tend now to only bowl in state or county tournaments because it is just more exciting. The local house tournaments are always the same exact people, and while you develop a camaraderie with those bowlers it becomes more like a league than a tournament environment. There have been a couple of new tournaments here recently that I really wanted to try at a center about an hour down the road, but for some reason they have been during the evening mid-week which is really difficult to get to. Might get the chance one of these days...who knows.
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