About Time!
Co-written by Tom Clukay and Matt Coe
Posted Sunday, November 9, 2008 10:31 PM

It’s been nearly three years since Factor X last defeated Cinema World, one of the teams with the best success ratio against the X Men in the President Bush era.  In three of the last four seasons heading into 2008-09, Factor X has gone just 1-and-9 against them, their last win coming way back in April of the 2005-06 bowling season. But just as all good – and bad – things must eventually come to an end, so too must all win streaks… or in the case of Factor X, losing streaks. So on the eve of the country’s election of a new president, it seems only fitting that Factor X began a new chapter against the team that has owned them each of the past two seasons, sweeping them 5-love to extend the team’s win streak to ten consecutive points.

In an uncanny case of déjà vu, the start of this week’s match was once again marred by lane breakdowns that took away from each team’s focus and sense of rhythm to start the night. In last year’s second match-up between the two, warm-ups were cut short by a lane breakdown on lane 24, forcing each bowler to get just half the normal allotment of tosses. This time, warm-ups were again cut short thanks to a problem with the ball return on lane 14 that was damaging the bowlers’ equipment.

Last season, Cinema World proved to both Factor X and the rest of the league that they are as tough mentally as anyone and, at least in the case of their battle with Factor X, were in fact mentally tougher than their opponents, overcoming the broken lane and the lack of practice to sweep X.  This season didn’t start out much better.  All told, there were three delays in all: one brief one in the middle of practice when the ball damage problem was first discovered, followed by two much-longer delays of 10 minutes or more: one at the end of practice, and another one two frames later. Each delay appeared to have little impact on the Cinema World players who, despite an average team age well above that of their Factor X counterparts, had little trouble staying loose and making good shots.  Not so for many of the Factor X players who came out of the unscheduled breaks tight, tugging shots and missing spares. By midway through game one Cinema World had once again built a substantial lead, and things were looking bleak indeed for X, Incorporated.

“Do you think it would be too much to ask for Clint [Goodnow] not to strike on this ball?” Coe queried his teammates early in the second half of game one, pointing to Goodnow’s ongoing four-bagger that was opposite Clukay’s measly 76 halftime score.

Somebody upstairs must have been listening, because Coe’s half-query, half-prayer-for-help was answered immediately. In what can only be described as a tale of two halves, Cinema World strikes quickly ground to a halt, as members of the Factor X entourage countered with strike fever.  Led by the sudden and surprise resurgence of Clukay (who turned around a 76 half to finish with five of his last six strikes and 213 overall), the X’ers began chipping away at the Cinema World lead. Matt Coe completed the comeback in the tenth, catching a strike on his first ball in that frame for a triple that earned X the come-from-behind 17-pin victory.

Game two featured the all-too-frequent phenomenon otherwise known as lane transition. Three bowlers from each side were able to navigate it successfully, two others didn’t. For Bill Boshans and Rich LeFrancois of Cinema World, the change was a welcome sight; Boshans added 21 pins to his game one tally, while LeFrancois’ score netted him an additional 13 pins overall. Gisi Dellmuth continued her steady play for Cinema World as well, deploying a “straight down the middle”approach that rendered any lane transition issues moot. Factor X countered with matching improvements from Bill Allen (+22 pins), Will Allen (233) and Matt Coe (216).

Ironically, the difference-maker in game two would not be the result of the bowlers who improved their scores, but the play of those who didn’t. As oil continued to migrate down the lane, Factor X teammates Tom Clukay and Buddy Wing began to struggle. But even their 35-pin falloff could not hold a candle to the 66-pin swan dive taken by Cinema World’s normally-reliable setup man, Clint Goodnow.  Goodnow’s 155 – the lowest score he’s ever bowled in a match against Factor X – doomed Cinema World to an 0-for-2 start against the X Men… their first multi-loss night against the X’ers since that fateful night in April of 2006.

With the threat of an upset looming, both teams stepped up their attacks in the finale: Cinema World hoping to reestablish themselves and continue their dominance, Factor X hoping to end Cinema World’s reign once and for all. What resulted was arguably the most-entertaining and well-played game of the match.  Eight of ten combatants – including all five members of Cinema World – posted increases in score, with the leadoff bowlers for each team setting the pace.

Having struggled through games one and two, lefty Dave Dipadua’s pesky 7-pins finally started to tip in the final game, enabling him to finally develop a steady rhythm and finish with 205, a full 44 pins better than his previous best of the evening. The rest of Cinema World quickly rallied behind their leadoff man, with Boshans (191), Dellmuth (183) and LeFrancois (194) all following Dipadua’s lead by posting their best games of the night as well, and Goodnow adding to his team’s cause with an 11-pin scoring improvement of his own. The resulting +88-pin improvement in team score to 1156 would have easily been enough to beat Factor X in either of the first two games… just not this one.

Doing Dipadua one better, Factor X leadoff Bill Allen more-than-matched Dipadua’s +44 205 with a +53 223 effort. A radical ball-and-line change by co-captain Tom Clukay enabled the team’s founder to add +21 pins to his previous game’s tally as well, earning the struggling lefty his first 600 series in any league since way back on September 15^th. Add in a matching 21-pin improvement by Coe (237, 667) and Will Allen’s 213-659 best-of-the-year finish, and it was another checkmark in the win column for Factor X, 1184-1156, leading to the 5-0 finish.

The 10-point (and counting) win streak is Factor X’s best thus far in the young season, eclipsing their 8-point win streak that they had back in weeks one and two. X will look to try and extend that streak against one of the most-explosive and most-improved teams in the league next week, Ken Michaud’s Ambushers, now featuring former PBA star George Tignor.

“They’ll be ready for us,” Tom Clukay predicted. “We’ve had pretty good luck against them the last few years, which means they’re usually in a pretty foul mood when we show up. To them, we’re Cinema World, and they’re us. We’re bowling pretty good again now, it should be fun.”