Girl's Bowling: Scoring bowling 101, how it works

Now that we are into the bowling season, it occurred to me that maybe not everyone knows the “bowling lingo” and point scoring system. So I thought I would do a quick bowling 101 class.

This year we have seven teams with five bowlers on a team. Every time you bowl, four bowlers’ scores count. If you have five players available, the one with the lowest score sits out. If you don’t have four players, the average, minus 5 points, of the player who has bowled the most games is used for the fourth player’s score.

Every time a team bowls, 11 points are up for grabs. Each game is worth 3 points — and you bowl three games each night. That accounts for 9 points. One point is awarded for the highest team single game score, with handicap, of the night and 1 point for the team that knocked down the most pins, with handicap, for all three games.

Now the hard part — determining a player’s average and handicap. If you bowled in this league last year you have an established average. This will be your average for the first nine games of the season. After that your average will change as your scores increase or decrease. (The average equals the total scores divided by the number of games bowled.) For new bowlers, the average is based on the first three games they bowl, even if they were the low bowler in a game and would ordinarily sit out. Those three games divided by three is their average and can change weekly after that.

To make things fair, our league is called a handicap league. That means each bowler gets “handicap” points added to their score. For example, if  your average is 140, you get 36 points; if your average is a 110, you get 63 points. The handicap number is gotten by taking 90 percent of the difference between your average and a 180 game — 180 minus a 140 average equals 40, which multiplied by .90 is 36; 180 minus 110 equals 70, times .90 is 63.

When you bowl a game you get a “scratch” score — what you actually bowled, without your handicap — and a score with handicap. At the end of the night, each bowler will  have a scratch series total and a handicap series total. In my weekly column, the Bowler of the Week is the player with the highest handicap series.

ABOUT SCORING

Unlike most bowling lanes, we do not have computer scoring. Each night a player from each team sits at the scorers’ table and manually keeps score. A strike (knocking down all 10 pins with one ball, one try) and a spare (knocking them all down with two balls and two tries.) earn you 10 points plus. When you get a strike, you get to add 10 plus what you get on the next two balls; with a spare you get 10 plus the next ball.

TEST SHEET

The first person (not a mens’ or womens’ team bowler) to call Archer Brown at the Reporter (749-1000) with the correct score to the above test sheet will win a free drink on me at the Legion. Good luck and I’ll see you on the lanes!