Going solo, together

The first day of February marked the return of law school bowling. This year, we're bowling at Chippewa Lanes, on the south end of South Bend. It's the third bowling alley in as many years for us 3Ls, which I think means that we've sampled every bowling establishment that the South Bend-Mishawaka area has to offer. Although the beer selection at Chippewa is less than ideal, the facilities are nice. There are lots of lanes, so the entire law school can bowl at once with room to spare. It looks like they'll be keeping the snack bar open for the duration of the night's bowling. And South Bend's smoking ban means that I don't leave smelling of an ashtray.

I'm part of a six-member team called Solo Practitioners. Only five of us made it out to the lanes tonight because one member is on the disabled list due to a snowboarding injury. We decided to join the competitive league, which includes the vast majority of the law school's teams. This means that we go head-to-head against another team for the first seven weeks. Tonight our opponent was a team going by the name of... I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter. Some of you may remember that that was the name of the bowling team I was on my 1L year. But none of this ICBING's members are former teammates - they're all 1Ls. I know it's entirely coincidental, but it would be cool if that team name were always be reserved for a 1L team. Anyway, they had some pretty fun shirts - bright yellow with "I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter" that parodied the logo of the Fabio-hocked product, and the name of a butter substitute (e.g., margarine, canola, olive oil...) on the back.

We had a very strong showing tonight. The team hit the ground running with everyone breaking 100 in the first game. Most of the scores dropped a bit in the second round, but it was enough to earn Solo Practitioners two wins over the new ICBING. Highlights of the night included two near-turkeys, an ICBING bowler dropping the ball on the back swing, our team captain's impressive 142, and the eclectic mix of music spanning about four decades. Here are the scores (aside from my scores, I've used initials for my teammates until I know if they want their identities kept confidential):

Alex: 119, 129
M: 111, 89
A: 123, 98
B: 142, 104
S: 119, 99
A (in absentia*): 66, 52

Solo Practitioners team scores: 680, 571
ICBING team scores: 533, 497

*Because we only had five bowlers tonight and the SBA needs us to report six scores, we filled our empty spot with the lowest score from our opponent's team.

All in all, it was a great start to our last year of law school bowling.