For someone who hadn’t ever bowled until last year, Aaron Davis has done pretty well.
Actually, make that extraordinarily well. “It’s pretty miraculous,” Southold/Greenport bowling head coach Alex Sinclair said.
Davis, a sophomore, bowled a career-high 228 in the Settlers’ 30-6 Suffolk County League IV loss to Riverhead at The All Star on Tuesday afternoon.
He rolled a 567 series, after knocking down 167 pins in his first game and another 172 in his final set for Southold (1-3).
“I thought it went pretty well,” Davis said. “I missed my mark. Also missed some breaks there. It’s bad breaks.”
Still, a pretty big leap for someone who had never rolled a bowling ball before last year.
“One of my friends that was a senior last year, he convinced me to bowl,” Davis said. “There was a spark inside.”
Davis caught on pretty quickly. “My first two weeks, I saw people doing a twohanded spin. I wanted to do that. It didn’t hook that much,” he said, adding that Settlers assistant volunteer coach Chris Turbush helped him to master the technique. “He helped me to get where I am now.”
Davis bested his previous high of 221, which he bowled in a 29-6 victory over Rocky Point on Dec. 5, when he also rolled his best series (596).
On Tuesday, he was paired against Riverhead’s Jayden Oliver, who recorded a 591 series. Davis lost his 1 on 1 battle with his foe, 2-1. His 228 game defeated Oliver by six pins but Oliver prevailed in the third encounter, 178-172.
“Aaron did great,” Sinclair said. “If you look at the box score, he only got one out of three points, but he was competitive in all three games.
“I can’t say enough about Aaron,” the coach continued. “He works hard every day. Comes to practice, and wants to get better himself and the rest of his team to get better.”
The right-handed Davis caught fire at the end of his second match, closing with six consecutive strikes. He said that he never had more than four or five strikes in a row.
“I was on a run. I was hot that game,” Davis said. “I kept hitting my mark. Same speed, same spin. I was just very consistent.”
Davis started his final game with his seventh straight strike.
After converting a spare, he failed to record a strike or spare in his next three frames.
“When the games happen, they oil lanes,” he said. “When you keep playing, the lanes get drier and drier. You’ve got to keep moving left. Or if you’re to the right of that [target], you got to move right. I just wasn’t making that adjustment.”
Davis eventually did make an adjustment and recorded successive spares before finishing with three strikes out of four opportunities.
Not surprisingly, Davis has been having the time of his life, doing something that kids his age would typically have to pay for.
“I am having fun,” he said. “This is one of the highlights of my day. I look forward to bowling and bowling with my friends.”
When he has struggled, Davis said that he has “learned that you’ve just got to roll with it. You can’t let something stick in your head too long. You’re going to keep making the same mistakes. You just got to let things fly over your head.”
His goals? “I’m hoping to get a new high and try to win a county final,” he said.
Doing well in the counties in the near future also is one of Sinclair’s goals. He deployed a young team, all underclassmen, against the Blue Waves (4-2). He noted that junior John Harvey registered a career-high 207 and won two of his three 1 on 1 matches. He added that junior Glenn Heidtmann (171), who had his best game of the season, and Wyatt Watkins (149) did well.
“We have a pretty big team. We’ve got 19 guys,” Sinclair said. “We didn’t bring everyone, I brought nine. It’s really great to see the interest in the sport. The kids are trying to get all their friends to play, which is wonderful. Hopefully we can grow this program and make it to a county final and maybe try and win something.”
Sinclair said that he was hoping to get junior Evan Czartosieski, who suffered an injury during the soccer season, back soon. He called Czartosieski, “a formidable starter.”