Slimmy, you will need a more aggressive ball than what you have, if you want to stay with Storm I would recommend the Passion, or the Special Agent, keep them dull.

I don't really have any preference for Storm. I'm probably going to pick up a pair of balls a month or so before we head to Nationals.

The Cell will be one, but I'm still trying to figure out the other.

So far I'm considering:

Black Widow Pearl
Resurgence
Momentum

Just not sure which one will be best suited to my game.

I don't know your game, but if the Cell is a given I would drop the resurgence from your list since it is pretty close to the Cell and you don't need two of the same ball. I would go with the Momentum or the BW pearl.

Alright, I'll probably go with the Black Widow pearl then.

I got my first report from Nationals last night. One of the female coaches I bowl with on Tues. bowled there last weekend. She currently holds a 206 on our house sport shot, and is a very deliberate and controlled bowler. She rarely plays inside, but rather strokes starting at 25, between 2-3 arrow out to 5 on our shot.

Her report to me was her high game was 245 and her low was 145. She had a 200 in each set with consistent series in each set. She had to play starting left toe on 18 and rolled straight up 12. If she was 1 board outside of 12, she left buckets. She normally has a good finish but said that her ball slid half way and had trouble recovering the last 15 feet. She rolls a normal 16-16.5 mph ball and said she had to slow down quite a bit from that.

People who played inside lines were light all day with many washouts. There was nothing to bounce off of. Her right side spares gave her trouble as the ball just slid and kept sliding to the right, and she is a deadly 10 pin shooter. She said her spare ball didn't help since her normal balls slid the same.

Don't remember what balls she uses, and I should have checked. But, she had them sanded at the Pro Shop before she left.

Here is a cool video of last year's Nationals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkTDswBVcTA&feature=related

See how easy it is to miss and why.

Is that really the caliber of bowler that goes? I guess it's a good excuse to take a vacation... I saw about 1 bowler with some semblance of balance, and 1 bowler that actually came anywhere near repeating a shot.

Yep that is a good cross section of who goes. When we go there are about 4 to 8 teams that are worth a darn and the rest are like you see, this is why you hear of people tossing a grand into the brackets. I always get beat out by someone shooting their high game of a low 500 set.

My first Nationals. I shot a 150+ game followed by a 126. I made it through 2 brackets.

Last year, in Reno, I would have made out putting a grand in brackets rather across the black jack table.