App takes players beyond scores
American sports fans have a fascination with statistics. To older baseball fans, numbers such as 714 (Babe Ruth’s career home run total) and 2,130 (Lou Gehrig ’s consecutivegames streak) were as known as the sum of two and two. It is hard to evaluate professional athletes without his quarterback rating or scoring average.
Bowling, perhaps belatedly, is beginning to enter the numerical world, thanks to the increasing sophistication of automatic scorers.
Lanetalk, a free app available on Apple and Google Play, allows bowlers to download their scores and review statistics from their performances. It provides services for the Professional Bowlers Association and any center that goes through the application process.
To our knowledge, Sportsman’s Bowl in Schenectady is the lone Capital Region center on board, but there are nine scoring systems with which the app is compatible.
“The company was founded in 2011 by a bowler who’s also an IT guy whose father was the coach for the national bowling federation in Sweden,” said Roberth Risberg Strindholm, CEO of the company based in Stockholm, Sweden. “He was spending a lot of time in different bowling centers, and he couldn’t just understand how it couldn’t be possible for the information from the scoring system to be published on the internet. So he started to build his only little tool that was exporting the information from the scoring system to publish it online and started to call that live scoring.”
Statistically minded players will love this app. Once he “claims” his score, done by pressing a button at the end of play, a bowler can read statistics such as first-ball average, clean percentage, first-ball strike percentage, pocket-hit percentage, carry percentage, et al.
It shows the bowler’s conversion percentage on each spare he has left over the statistical period chosen (last 30 games, year-to-date and all-time).
“The reaction is people are shocked about it,” said Paul Adkins, one of the proprietors at Sportsman’s. “They had no clue that it could be done. Those who are using it love it.”
With some high school proposing to have “virtual” matches, the app would seem to be ideal for that situation.
“We haven’t been that active in looking for new centers abroad as so it’s been more of a European venture until 2019,” Risberg Strindholm said.
For centers to get on board, he said, “They go into the lanetalk.com site and click for centers, and there’s a list of compatible systems. They can just apply for an account, and we will help them from there. Most of the systems are providing this Lanetalk activation for free, but for some versions of Brunswick and Qubica AMF, there’s an activation fee.”
Lanetalk has an agreement with the Professional Bowlers Association and its owner, Bowlero, to provide stats for televised matches. Risberg Strindholm said the company plans a big push in 2021.
Local scene
Tom Amyot of Schenectady and nephew, Don Amyot of Mechanicville, combined for a 1,410 total (with handicap) to win the Albany League Bowling Association of New York doubles tournament at Spare TimeLatham. They earned $740 for their 31-pin victory over the Fort Edward tandem of Stephen Peacock and Jesse Fonda. There were 36 teams entered. … Jake Rivers Jr. of Albany rolled a perfect game en route to a 1,094 four-game series and a triumph in the Town ’n Country Sweeper Series. He won $300. Joe Devellis Jr. of Colonie was second with 1,041. Third-place Art Van Buren of Altamont (1,010), who also had a 300 game, was “Bowler of the Series,” picking up an additional $350.
David Handlowich of Ancram had to get an 11th-hour replacement partner, Chad Mees of Buffalo, and they were victorious in the Sammy V’s 10th Frame Sr. Tour over-50/under-50 doubles tournament at King Pin Lanes in Rome. There were a handful of other Capital Region bowlers entered but none cashed.
National news
A part of the Team USA coaching staff since 2002, Rod Ross, 64, has decided to retire. ... The Team USA Trials scheduled for Jan. 2-7 in Indianapolis have been canceled. The 2020 Team USA roster, which includes Rotterdam’s Liz Kuhlkin, will represent Team USA in 2021 competitions.