Hello, was wondering if anyone out there has any good suggestions for a practice routine or drills to work with high school students on spares. We have a small group of 15 boys and 6 girls, we can keep them all together or separated as needed. I'm looking for fresh ideas to keep their attention and hopefully working together as a group on the lanes. We've worked a little with the 3-6-9 method, but most have plastic with mixed results. Along those same lines, any ideas to help ward off tournament jitters? Getting things accomplished in practices is one thing, but getting them back into the frame of mind when their confidence was high and they made those spares is difficult. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

http://bowlingknowledge.info/images/stories/bt_nov306_advanced_spare.pdf

and taking from the same web site
SPARE SHOOTING DRILL

The spare shooting drill can be done alone or in partners.

* On the first shot, the bowler throws the ball straight down 20 in an effort to hit the head pin directly. This will likely leave corner pin combinations.
* Shoot the remaining pins.
* Alternate shooting left-side and right side spares. For example, this method will likely leave the 4-7 & 6-10, often together as the big-4
* You can spice this drill up by consecutive conversions. You must make 10 right-side spares in-a-row before moving on to the left-side spares.
* Or, for every miss, you subtract points. The bowler or team must earn 10 or 20 points. If they miss, one point is subtracted.
* If a bowler is having difficulty throwing straight, try asking them to lead with the elbow through the target. Emphasize through the target rather than to the target.

and

http://bowlingknowledge.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=34

Thanks coach, that's exactly the type thing I was looking for, its on the list for next practice! Those links are great too, thanks again I appreciate it.

I have been coaching highschool age bowlers for years. The best thing anyone can learn for shooting spares is how to throw the ball straight.

Start by showing them how to position their hands by having the pinky spread and the index finger pulled in closer to the middle finger. You want to feel the pinky in line with your arm and pointed to the floor and pointed to the target on the follow through.

A fun drill to do is to have them stand on the 7 board and aim at the 2 or 3 board and pick the 10 pin out of the rack, when they have gotten that down with a spare ball see if any of them can do it with their most hooking reactive ball.

Then have them use the 4th arrow for all of their spares. This is where the majority of the oil is on any pattern, the 3,6,9 system is based off their strike shot and the oil will deplete in this area where the oil in the middle of the lane will be less depleted and will help the ball go straight.

What I do is I start off by finding where I need to stand to pick the 10 pin out of a full rack of pins, then if I move 6 boards to the right I will have a straight on shot at the 9 pin if I hit the 20 board. If I move my feet 5 or 6 boards more (depends on how wide the bowler is) I will have a square on shot at the 8 pin and 5 or 6 boards more I will have a square on shot at the 7 board.

Make sure the bowler is square to the pin and not square to the foul line, if the bowler is square to the foul line and shooting at a 7 or 10 pin the arm will follow through to the middle of the lane instead of to the 7 or 10 pin.

When they get good at this see if they can shoot the ball straight up the 5th arrow (25 board) to make the bucket (2,4,5 and sometimes 8) and the wash out (1,2,4 and 10).

The girls may have a hard time with throwing a straight ball and may slip into a back up ball, this is due to a weak wrist, and bad arm angle, they will need to do some wrist strengthening exercises and work hard at keeping their armswings in line with their head and target.

Some women bowlers have a disadvantage in that their arms will not hang straight down, and turn out away from their body, this angle causes a back up ball.

To tell if any of your girls have this have them stand straight with their arms straight down at their side and their palm pointed toward you, the ones that need special attention to arm angle will have their lower arms angled away from their hips.

These girls will have to work on arm swing drills and see if their arms will swing straight, or if they will have to push the ball in toward the front of their body a little or out away from their body a little. You will have to determine by how the ball lines up with their head at the top of the back swing.

Low game- lowest score wins. Gutters count as strikes or spares.
5 ball drill- Take off the 6-10, 4-7, 3-6-10, 2-4-7, and strike in a row
If you have several lanes you could do something like needing to pick off the 7-10 in a frame before you can move to the next lane. First person to go through all lanes wins. Just let them know that rushing through won't help.

For tournament jitters, you could get every person lined up on the approach on both sides of a lane. Then you get some one to bowl and tell them to strike. It's kind of nerve wracking at first.