Army teams finish second in Armed Forces Bowling

[Hannibal]

By Tim Hipps
January 18, 2006

RENO, Nev. (Army News Service, Jan. 18, 2005) – The All-Army men’s and women’s bowling teams finished runner-up to Air Force in the 2006 Armed Forces Bowling Championships Jan. 9 through 11 at the National Bowling Stadium.

For the third consecutive year, the Armed Forces Championships were contested in conjunction with the amateur Team USA Championships. For the first time, a Soldier made the men’s 32-player cut and advanced to the final two days of match-play competition to vie for a spot on Team USA. Two All-Air Force bowlers also made the cut, and one earned a spot on the national team.



Army Staff Sgt. Dwayne Watkins finished second in the Armed Forces men’s tournament with a 24-game total of 4,902 pins. A helicopter crew chief stationed at Fort Rucker, Ala., Watkins was 24th among 148 bowlers in the first three days of the Team USA Championships. After bowling 16 more games, he finished 28th overall.

“I’d rather lose by 100,” Watkins said. “It’s a team effort, and that’s two spares anywhere with six guys bowling three days,” he said.

Each Armed Forces competitor bowled eight games on three consecutive days. The Soldiers gained 205 pins on Air Force during the final day but did not overcome falling nearly 500 pins behind in their first eight games.

“We made a pretty good jump in the last two days,” Watkins said. “The team effort was great. We had a lot of young kids coming in. This is their first time of trying out and two of them made it [onto the All-Army team]. They’re good players – just a little more teaching and fine-tuning in their game and they’ll be back.”

Lt. Col. Celethia Abner of Fort Bliss, Texas, led the All-Army women’s team with a 24-game score of 4,322, which earned seventh place in Armed Forces women’s singles. A 10-time Armed Forces competitor, Abner missed the tournament last year while serving as chief nurse at the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, Iraq.

“Considering not bowling for a whole year, I could’ve done a little better in some games with some spares, but overall I was consistent,” she said. “As a team, we really pushed through but we had some struggles.”

The American Bowling Congress, Women's International Bowling Congress, Young American Bowling Alliance and USA Bowling merged to form the United States Bowling Congress on Jan. 1, 2005. The USBC is the national governing body for amateur bowling.