Our event this weekend was at AMF Deer Valley Lanes and we had good turnout with 86 total entries (59 qualifying and 27 economy parlay), 24 total cashers, a 1 in 3.4 cash ratio and paid out over $4,000.00 in main and side event prize funds. Players bowled on the PBA 45ft Dick Webber oil pattern. Most of the players played in the middle of the lane trying to push their ball out past the 2nd arrow. This house typically has a lot of friction and it didn't take the pattern very long to break down and forced players to move in further which led to high scores as the day went on.
As always, we want to welcome our first-time bowlers to the SFT AHT family! Welcome Tina Williams, Bill Butler, Elbert Morgan, Jerry Wallace, Moriah Taylor and Steve Dekkar to our bowling family! We hope you all had a good time at your first event and we look forward to seeing you at the next one! Also, congrats to Moriah who advanced all the way to the finals in her first ever event! Also, congrats to Douglas Poe and Eric Carroll on advancing to the quarter finals through the economy parlay! We almost always have 1 bowler that advances by winning the parlay and bowling well again. Congrats and nice bowling to everyone!
The quarter finals, like the rest of the event, was medium to high scoring with the standings be pretty tight and being determined by the final game of the quarterfinals. In the A division, with only 6 players, we advanced to the top 2 which were Ron Gonzales and Joe Ashley. In the B division, we had #1 seed Bill Butler, who had been hot all day, taking on Richard Wallace. Lastly, in the C division we had #1 seed Jeff O’Connor taking on fellow newcomer Moriah Taylor!
The A division match was fairly close with Ron and Joe going back and forth in a lefty versus lefty match. Both bowlers were bowling good until the 9th frame when Joe missed a 7-pin spare. Ron was able to capitalize on the miss and finished with strikes in his final six frames to punch his ticket to the finals, 252 to 228. The B division match was also very close with both bowlers having the same amount of handicap. Bill and Richard both battled right down to the 10th frame. Bill was up first and his 1st shot when a little light and ended up leaving the 5-10 split. He missed the spare and Richard was able to strike out to make it to the finals winning easily 262 to 210. The C Division match was fairly close as well with Jeff trying stay clean to keep some pressure on Moriah, but she was able to keep focused and finished the match just ahead of Jeff, 199 to 183.
The final match was a started off a bit back and forth for a bit with each bowler striking in the first couple of frames. Moriah, who had been bowling consistently most of the day, opened with a few bad splits early on. Then Richard was able to start striking with a 3 bagger starting in the 5th frame, but it was too little too late as Ron started the match on fire. After a single pin spare, Ron ran the next 7 strikes in a row to jump out to an insurmountable lead and never looked back. This left Moriah and Richard fighting for 2nd place, but Richard was able to stay clean for the rest of the game and finished with a nice 247 and Moriah finished with a 221. Ron was able to keep his strikes going and finished with a 283 to lock up his 8th Strikeforce Tour title and $900.00 first place prize! Also, congrats to Richard Wallace for coming in 2nd and also to Moriah Taylor on 3rd place in her first event! Thanks to everyone that came out this weekend to make this such a successful event! We look forward to seeing you at our next event on Sunday, May 20th at Brunswick Kyrene!
