The ball bulldozed into the arrangement of pins. All 10 clattered to the ground. A strike. Perry Cuccaro ambled away, head bowed, demeanor unaffected, looking almost indifferent.
“Smile, Perry!” a Westfield parent hollered jokingly. Cuccaro gave a tolerant shake of the head and pulled back his lips a bit. It wasn’t quite a smile. But why smile? It was just another day at the office, the first of the season.
Westfield demolished Union, 7-0, with a total wood margin of 2874–2186. The Blue Devils pounded the Farmers in the first game, slipped squeakily past them in the second and eased to victory in the third. Westfield set a goal of 2800, and the Blue Devils hit that baseline while acknowledging they have room to grow.
“We just have to sustain a little bit,” head coach Ralph Corey said. “We had some dips today. We’ll work through those throughout the season.”
Westfield’s overwhelming superiority imbued the game with a nonchalant air. The result seemed preordained. The mood verged on collegial. One Union fan gleefully exclaimed after the first game that “we kept it (the margin of defeat) under 500.”
That the Farmers did, losing 1048–608. Westfield left fewer than five frames open in a dominant first game that jibed with Corey’s preseason emphasis on being the best spare team in the county.
Each of Westfield’s five starters—Micah Berger, Dylan Scanlon, Ben Hsu, Gabe Dayon, Perry Cuccaro—finished strong. Hsu even banged four strikes to close the game. The Blue Devils battered the Farmers from the outset to set the tone.
Union’s opening game had fans questioning if it was Saturday, because, well, “we don’t roll on shabbos.” (If you don’t understand that reference, go watch The Big Lebowski. You’ll thank us later.)
The match’s complexion flipped in the second game. Union clung to Westfield. The Blue Devils started slowly and trailed through four frames but eventually pulled away to win, 890–751.
“We kind of broke down and didn’t have the energy from the first game,” said Cuccaro, a senior co-captain and the team’s anchor. But who could blame Westfield? The first-game shellacking punched Union onto its heels and propelled Westfield to an unassailable position of dominance.
Most of Westfield’s starters indicated dissatisfaction at the performance, though they emphasized that victory trumps performance. The second and third-game struggles derived partly from issues with the lanes’ oil. Members of both teams, including Union’s anchor, complained about the lanes breaking down.
Jersey Lanes oils its lanes on Saturday mornings, so by Tuesday night, the oil—crucial to ensuring consistency in how a ball spins—dries up. To account for the dissipating oil, Dayon shifted his starting position farther and farther left, until he was basically throwing from the next lane over.
Corey also made strategic substitutions to counteract this. For the third game, Cole Turnof and Tyler Wong replaced Berger and Scanlon. “The way their balls were moving on the drier lanes,” Corey said, “they were hitting the pocket much cleaner. Besides their unbelievable scores [in the first two games], I liked the way they were throwing their shots as the lanes were drying out.”
The third game, like its predecessor, remained tight for a while. But it was never really in doubt. The game hummed along placidly, the biggest commotion erupting from just behind the lanes, when news broke about Aaron Judge’s potential move to the San Francisco Giants and viewers launched into earnest discussion.
Turnof stole the show in the third game, bowling two separate turkeys on his transition from the JV to the varsity lane.
Cuccaro led the way overall for Westfield, bowling a 624, and Dayon and Hsu followed with a 585 and a 569. Hsu delivered Westfield’s best game with his opening 233.
The mood afterwards was happy but subdued. Westfield expected this. Now comes the real test: Scotch Plains-Fanwood on Thursday. The Raiders and the Blue Devils are bitter rivals and exist in a tier of their own in Union County. Thursday will be Westfield’s toughest match of the season.
“It’s always a nail-biter,” Corey said. “Every game, it goes down to the last shot. So we expect nothing less, we expect everything to be the same. They’ll bring their best, we’ll bring our best, it’ll be a fun, competitive game.”
Hsu was a bit less complimentary. “They were talking garbage about us,” he said.
Westfield can’t abide that.
