Counting Boards

Growing up, there were several traditional ways of teaching different aspects of the bowling game. When I was in youth leagues, we were taught simple principles, such as follow through, hit your target, and reach out. Very simple.

Of course, as I got older, I wanted higher scores on a regular basis and needed more advanced input to get there. There weren’t a lot of high-level coaches in our area, so our game improvements came from mentors, parents, and fellow bowlers. Even then, things like breakpoint, axis tilt, axis rotation, etc. were not common topics of discussion amongst us.

As our game has evolved in the last 20+ years, our ways of teaching and coaching has needed to evolve with it. As a full time instructor and part time coach, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my teaching methods so my students can best absorb the information being taught.

In this article, I’d like to introduce another way to count boards for your starting position and perhaps your target(s), depending on where they are on the lane.

I don’t consider this a replacement for the traditional way of counting boards, but more of a complement. Also, perhaps it can be considered more of a shortcut method to aid in getting lined up quickly. Everyone likes shortcuts when they provide the same or better results, right? Let’s take a look at the traditional way and a couple of new methods and see what you think.

The traditional view

Traditionally, we have been taught to count from the gutter toward the middle arrow. Naturally, lefthanders start from the left and righthanders start from the right, as shown ...