A Little About Me

I didn't begin bowling too long ago. Many of you have been doing it longer than I have. In fact my jump into the competitive world of bowling has happened gradually over the past two years. Last year was the 1st Denny's All-American High School Championships and when I heard that the top seniors from Alaska had a chance to compete in this tournament I knew that I had to be the next one. I spent the entire summer doing nothing but bowling in leagues, tournaments, and of course some individual practice in my spare time. This took me from a 175 average house bowler to about a 205 average bowler and I have only been getting better.

I hope that my chances in the tournament this weekend will only be related to this improvement and not to the average I have created. Many of the bowlers in this tournament are much better than I and are like many of you who have been bowling for almost all of their lives. Being a great bowler is not the only thing that will earn a candidate admission into this tournament. I think the best ways to make it into this tournament are as follows:

- Maintain exceptional grades
- Participate in many extracurricular activities (especially community service)
- Bowl actively in and outside of your high school team
- Join a PBA experience league (if your community offers this for youth bowlers)
- Practice, Practice, Practice

This will almost assure your admittance into the Denny's All-American High School Championships.

Good Luck.

The Trip

6:00 AM Wednesday March 26th, I drag myself from bed with no strength but the excitement of the tournament. By 7:00 my brother, mother and I are ready to leave and we call the taxi to come to our home in Anchorage Alaska and take us to the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the flight was to leave at about 9:00. The only problem was that on this particular morning, this flight was cancelled, and the Anchorage airport (as small as it is) could not provide another flight to Minneapolis until 3:20 PM later that day. After dealing with this delay we finally secured a flight for 9:40 PM that night.

After routing through Minnesota we finally made it to Newark Liberty International Airport at about 10:30 AM EST. Tired and ready to end our travel my mother, brother and I got out rental car and took the New Jersey turnpike from the airport to New Brunswick. 30 minutes and $2.05 later we made it to the East Brunswick Hilton. This hotel is very large and is surrounded by two huge office buildings (Center Tower 1 & 2). To a small town Anchorage boy the amount of people and commerce in this city is overwhelming. Tomorrow the bowling begins. Tonight all I can worry about is getting my rest and perhaps something to eat. Maybe I can spot some PBA members in the hotel from the Denny's U.S. Open event that is happening as I type. (Last I looked Brad Angelo was in 1st. Sean Rash of course not far behind but still in 17th place).

This Seems Interesting

As a way of passing the time in between bowling and watching bowling I have decided to keep this short blog for the next couple of days documenting the experience of the Denny's All-American High School Championships in this the final week of March 2008. My greatest reason for creating this is for all of those high school juniors who want to know what this tournament is like and to perhaps get them interested in the tournament for next year. I'll update with my traveling explanation here in a few minutes and I guess I'll give a little personal background before tomorrow when I finally meet the other participants. I will return...

Travis Moyer - Anchorage