With less than three weeks to go, the Central American and Caribbean Games is fast approaching. In our preparations, the Bermuda tenpin bowling team recently wrapped up a four-day training camp at Warwick Lanes.

“Our team has been taken out of our comfort zone and challenged to improve areas of our game that we wouldn't normally work on,” said Shannon Lee, who is representing the national team for the first time.

“This training has provided a high level of expertise and information. This by far has taught me the most and improved my game not only on the lane but also how I think and approach the game with intention.”

One addition to our training environment here in Bermuda was adding precise markings on the lanes at 34ft to 37ft on board 15 and 40ft to 43ft on board ten. The lane surface of the bowling centre in the Dominican Republic has these 3ft targets embedded on the lane, while Warwick Lanes doesn’t have these embedded manufactured markings.

With electric tape and scissors in hand, I added these strategic markings to eight lanes to provide the bowlers with an improved training scenario. These lane markings aid bowlers in the targeting process as well as assisting both coaches and bowlers in observing how ball motion changes over time.

Sport tenpin bowling faces the challenge of a perpetually changing playing environment. As bowling balls are thrown down the lane, lane conditioner is extracted from the lane due to conditioner remaining on the cover of the bowling ball.

Over time, increased friction emerges in the areas that bowlers throw over. Through observation of how the ball slows down and changes direction differently, we gain information used for decision-making. The markings help us interpret the ball motion changes more accurately and inform us if we should move to a cleaner part of the lane or make a ball change to a cover that has less traction and a core that will stabilise slower. In this scenario, we want the ball to travel further down the lane before it changes direction into the pins.

Over time, the reality of oil extraction from the lane can also lead to an equipment performance decline as some of this conditioner goes into the cover, as these are not actually smooth at the microscopic level. During the manufacturing curing process, some evaporation occurs, leading to peaks and valleys, adding various levels of porosity to each cover. hese channels get filled with conditioner that gets trapped. We utilise special heating and sonic treatment equipment to extract the lane conditioner, returning performance.

The ball motion interpretation process is the result of knowledge, experience and deep insight into the interaction of physics and chemistry. To illustrate, the lane pattern is overlaid on the panel, creating areas with side-to-side and front-to-back zones of varying friction. In short, sport bowling is like interpreting a putting green that keeps changing periodically. We are presented with a lane graph, a visually coloured interpretation of where the conditioner is applied and its thickness, to help anticipate changes in how the ball will roll and adjustments to get the ball to the pocket and to inevitably strike more.

One unique strategy I am employing with my teams to help us see this emergent friction is a process in which we make a pre-emptive move for the next strike shot, then add a mathematical move to convert many spares. With this process, we can confirm if the next strike shot move is a good one, giving the next bowler to come up more confidence on their strike shot.

“This concept was completely new to me. But since learning it and seeing how it works, it’s really fascinating,” said Lamar Richardson, veteran national team bowler.

“The maths works. Seeing is believing. It’s like gaining an extra strike shot without actually having to use one. You’re always collecting information that will help you to strike more, even on a spare shot.”

Our success as a team in the Dominican Republic will require each individual to proactively move as we anticipate lane environment changes based on our collective observations.

As we observe and see changes for one individual, the next individual will move proactively. To illustrate, when I coached the Philippines to a gold medal in the team event at the Asian Youth Championship, in Bangkok Thailand, the team had moved 56 times in three games. If we had moved only 55 times, we would have finished fourth and missed a medal. Greatness is in the details.