Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010

Raleigh bowlers strike high score

A fired-up North Raleigh bowling team has soared to lofty heights in league play, and its members won't stop until they are in the stratosphere of bowling scores.

It's all about the pursuit of perfection.

On Jan. 28, the five-member mixed gender team, called Let's Hang Mel, achieved a three-game series score of 3,784, the highest score in the nation for the 2009-2010 season, which runs through April.

The score is good enough to put the team third in all-time highest scoring, behind an Illinois team that scored 3,893 in 2003 and a team from Michigan that scored 3,822 in 2006, according to Mark Miller, public relations spokesman for the United States Bowling Congress.

Let's Hang Mel scored its record-setting series in a mixed-gender division of teams playing with four men and one woman. Their high score is a scratch score, based on the number of pins they knocked down during a three-game series of play, with no handicapping.

Melissa Morrow is "Mel."

Her team's name is a play on words in bowling-speak.

"Hanging is when four players on a team bowl a strike and the fifth player doesn't," Morrow explained.

Morrow's love of the game runs deep. She's 35 and has made the bowling lanes her home away from home for 30 years. Her mother, Frankie McDaniel, is the manager of Buffaloe Lanes North, which Let's Hang Mel calls its headquarters. Morrow's brother, David McDaniel, is one of her teammates.

"I love bowling," she declared, and reminisced about her earliest bowling experiences.

"I remember my first ball was a Black Beauty with no finger holes," she said.

Morrow also coaches the Millbrook High School bowling team.

"Sometimes people look at a mix [gender] team and don't give a lot of credit to the women," said Larry Parker, a member of Let's Hang Mel. "Women can excel at the sport."

Parker, 35, brings a high level of play to the team. He has been playing for 26 years, since he was 9. He translated his youthful love of the game into a collegiate career on the Illinois State University's club bowling team.

Parker made back-to-back honor scores on Jan. 21 and Jan. 28. A player achieves an honor score by bowling a three-game series totaling 800 or higher. Before those two, he had scored honors just twice in his life.

A perfect single game score is 300. League play involves a three-game series, and 900 spells perfection.

"It's tough to put three good games together; even great bowlers don't do this very often," Parker said.

Nick Davis, 27, is the newest member of Let's Hang Mel. Like Parker, Davis was a collegiate bowler, having bowled on the N.C. State University Club team. He finished second in the 2009 USBC Intercollegiate Singles Championships in Euless, Texas last May.

"Even though there are perfect scores, there's no such thing as ultimate perfection," he said. "So there's that, and the fact that I have always just wanted to be better than my dad."

Shane Phelps, 37, who has completed many perfect 300 games, has risen high in bowling from humble beginnings.

"My first league average was a 147," he said. "I have practiced a lot and watched a lot of bowling on TV. I picked out a style that I thought would work for me and just tried to emulate it."

McDaniel, 40, Morrow's brother and teammate, believes this team is one of the strongest mix teams in the country.

"Most of our team has been bowling together a long time, and we know each other's strengths and weaknesses," he said. "But I think we can do even better than we did last week."

Parker agrees that it's his teammates' familiarity with each other and their ability to communicate that spells success.

"Some teams have a lot of individuality, and the players bowl for themselves," he explained. "We communicate with each other, and that communication produces better results."

Let's Hang Mel is hoping to hang onto the national high score for the rest of this season and wouldn't mind it if they manage to top themselves.

"We're jumping for joy," Parker said, "but that score only drives us to want to beat it."