Bermuda’s bowling team have started making up for lost time after finally getting their Central American and Caribbean Games campaign started in El Salvador on Sunday.

The six-man contingent of Dennis Joell, Damien Matthews, David Maycock, Carl Reid, Lamar Richardson, Dayvon Tucker were originally due to arrive in Central America last Tuesday.

However, as a result of storms across the East Coast of the United States, they were delayed at Newark airport due to the lack of alternative routes and seats on later flights being available.

Despite missing the individual and doubles competitions and enduring a lack of preparation time, the team gave a spirited performance in the Trios competition after arriving only on the eve of the event.

In the first round, Reid, Tucker and Joell finished seventh out of ten, with a combined total of 3,456 pins from their six matches. Venezuela topped the rankings with 3,910 pins, ahead of Puerto Rico (3,868) and Mexico (3,792).

Matthews, Richardson and Maycock teamed up for round two and scored a total of 3,530 pins, which also resulted in a seventh-place finish.

Colombia came out on top (3,951 pins) ahead of Puerto Rico (3,935).

“As you can imagine the team were very disappointed with not arriving in El Salvador in time to compete from the start of competition,” said team manager Steven Riley, who conceded the team’s previous ambitions, which included trying to qualify for the Pan Am Games, have been dashed by the disruption.

“We’ve tried to keep a positive mindset in the team so the last few days won’t affect our results.

“We originally had two main goals, one was to back up our last CAC Games appearance with another medal [won silver in the trios in Colombia in 2018]. The second was to qualify for this year’s Pan Am Games which we can’t now as the criteria for that covers overall results.

“Heading into the second half of the tournament, we are aware that the task at hand won’t be an easy one especially missing the practice sessions and not being familiar with how the lanes will react.”

The team will return to in the Quintets event today.