How long is 100 yards? How high is 500 feet? 60 feet? Many people have trouble with numbers. Have you ever seen the raffle contest where you must guess how many marbles are in a jar? We give our best guesses working from what experience we have and most of those guesses are completely wrong. The vast majority of us don’t have the proper experience to develop an accurate answer. However, a football fan has a good idea what the length of 100 yards is, a climber knows 500 feet, and of course a bowler can march off 60 feet with ease. These numbers match something within our experience. Concrete visual, physical things that give the numbers 100, 500 and 60 some meaning.

Many coaches have had the difficulty of getting across to the team how important it is to pick pins. This is especially true of younger bowlers. To tell a team of 9 year olds that they left 243 pins on the lane might sound like a specific number that the team would be able to understand but the problem is that they don’t. By and large numbers have little meaning without the proper experience. The Smartie™ Challenge is a way to give a team the visual representation that it needs in order to make the number of points left on the lane meaningful.

REQUIREMENTS One very large box of Smarties™ (a few hundred), one spoon, one clear jar

SIMPLE LOSS

Have the team play a game, keeping score as usual. Whenever a bowler leaves pins on the lanes at the end of a frame have the bowler take the spoon and put that many Smarties™ in the clear jar. If the bowler counts thirteen in the frame, two Smarties™ will be placed in the jar. A count of eight would have seven Smarties™ placed in the jar. Each bowler does this until the end of the game. The total number of Smarties™ in the jar represent the number of pins on the lane. This is the simple loss from not picking pins. Adding these points to the score of the team would give the minimum score possible in the game that was bowled had all the pins been picked.

The simple loss game begins to teach the bowlers about the value of the pins left on the lane but it doesn’t do a very good job of teaching the bowlers about the true nature of the game and the importance of spares. For that type of training, the team should play the compound loss format of this game.

As a team progresses or with older players the object of the game becomes one of computing the compound loss. The rules for this Smartie™ Challenge are basically the same as with simple loss but with one large difference. In compound loss the maximum game possible is being computed. If a bowler counts thirteen on the first ball and misses the corner pin on the next two balls, two Smarties™ are put into the jar. However if the bowler throws a strike in the next frame fifteen more Smarties™ are put in the jar. This represents the number of pins lost because the spare was not converted. The general rule for compound loss is that any pin combination that can reasonably be expected to be spared should be spared. Headpins, Aces and Splits cannot be expected to be spared. If a bowler punches a three pin on the first ball, doesn’t spare the next ball and gets fifteen in the frame, no Smarties™ are put in the jar yet but however many points the bowler gets on the first ball the next frame will be put in the jar for the lost opportunity by missing the spare.

ACTUAL USE

The coach will keep track of how many points are usually left on the lane during games. If 200 are often left on the lane and the coach would like to reduce this number, the coach will set a goal of say 150 pins. The coach introduces the Smartie™ Challenge and if at the end of the game the team has put in less than 150 Smarties™ into the jar, the team gets to eat the Smarties™ in the jar. If the team is over the goal then the Smarties™ go back into the box and the team can try to do better next time. NEVER GIVE OUT SMARTIES™ FOR GETTING CLOSE!!!! It is important that the coach pick a useful goal that may be achievable in time but is not so difficult that the team will not have any chance of success. The goal should not be very easily achievable or the coach is giving the wrong message. To move from 200 to 190 is not a reasonable goal. It is too easy. You want to encourage marked improvement with pin picking.

AGE GROUPINGS

This game was designed for Bantam aged bowlers so that they could look into the jar and see how many points were being left on the lane. It was later found that Senior YBC bowlers will do a lot for Smarties™ as they also wanted to play the Smartie™ Challenge.

* This game is copyright by Ken Gryschuk.  You may download the game for your own private use.  You may not publish this game in any medium.  All rights are held by Ken Gryschuk.