Well most of the time we have went to the west or north side of town we normally get 70 – 80 entries. The only non-holiday events to ever get over 100 entries all came from Brunswick centers in the east valley. Well NOT ANY MORE! AMF Deer Valley brought out 60 members, 105 entries, had 27 cashers, a 1 in 3.8 cash ratio, and paid out over $5,000 in prizes. We are exactly one month away from our 1 year anniversary, and I can’t thank all of you enough for doing what you have done to help grow the club to this size in less than a year! We are approaching the one year mark and it’s very clear we have many more years to come!
The players bowled on one of the longest and heaviest patterns we have bowled on in quite a while. The scores were pretty low all weekend. Saturday’s cut scores were all around +60 and Sunday’s were even lower. The quarter finals got even lower with most of the semi-final cut scores being players that bowled below average. It was clear that after each strip and re-oil, the lanes were getting a touch tougher, and the key to advancing through each round was making spares and staying out of trouble. The pattern was a 44ft modified house pattern that could be attacked from any angle and at any speed. We saw high ball speeds and low balls speeds advancing but the key was that you had to be consistent with your ball speed and hitting your mark. The pattern didn’t have any area that yielded a lot of area to miss.
As always we like to take the time to welcome some of the new members to the SFT AHT family that joined us at AMF Deer Valley. Cortez Schenk, Gary Demeny, Travis Swartzentruber, Scott Sparks, and Kenneth Baker were all on the lanes bowling in this weekends event. We hope you all had a great time in your first event and look forward to seeing you again. We also had Joe Mascio, Andrea Murray, Gary Demeny, Cortez Schenk, and Zach Huglin for making it to their first quarter finals at this event. At every event there are first time quarter finalists and most of the time first time titlists. It is a very competitive environment that anyone can win in, and making the quarter finals for the first time is a huge accomplishment. Congrats to all of you.
We had one bowler not only show the power of the parlay, but showed the power of combining a bunch of our tournament features. That bowler was Mike Barcus and he really worked his tournament options very well. He walked in on Saturday and paid a small $35 entry fee to enter the economy parlay and our new Saturday bounties. He won the parlay and then bowled +34 in his free qualifying round won by the economy parlay. He didn’t advance off of this score but since his bounty entry fee covered all of his Saturday scores, he just missed the cut and ended up taking home the $100 bounty for high qualifying series that didn’t advance. He then used that $100 to give it another shot on Sunday. He almost pulled the same thing and barely missed the cut, but since he got in the divisional insurance he ended up advancing to the quarter finals on Sunday! Way to work your options Mike! Great bowling, although I know you said your knee is on fire from all of the games!
105 entries later we had our top 8 bowlers in the semi – finals. I have to admit most of the semi-final matches weren't too dramatic. In the A division we had Seth Greinermiller taking on Charlie Krauch, and Joe Mascio taking on Wes Marema. Charlie and Joe advanced to bowl each other in the A division final match. In the B Division finals we had Kevin Enomoto taking on Bo Copeland, and Brian Cail taking on Joey Kolenc. Kevin and Bo’s match was much higher scoring but Kevin won and would end up bowling Joey Kolenc. Joey did have to spare and get 9 in the 10th frame to defeat Brian and advance which he was able to do.
In the division finals we had two very close matches all the way to the end. In the A division final match it was all coming down to the 10th frame. Charlie Krauch struck out to force Joe to throw a double in the 10th as Charlie has done so many times. Joe was unable to do it so Charlie moved on to try and win his 3rd standard event title. Kevin won pretty easily against Joey and moved on to bowl Charlie for the AMF Deer Valley $1,000 championship title!
Charlie was squeaking by all day long but was bowling great in match play to get to where he was. Kevin however was really doing great all day long. It looked as if Kevin had a pretty good advantage in not only ball reaction but comfort on the lanes. This proved to be pretty true with Kevin really turning it up in the final match defeating Charlie 257 to 178. Congrats to Kevin on winning his first SFT AHT title and to Charlie Krauch on another impressive finish!
Thanks to everyone that came out for this event! We look forward to seeing you at our next event at Brunswick Desert Sky lanes. WE WILL BE USING THE 2013 NATIONALS PATTERN (41ft) for this event! If you are looking for practice on the pattern, then this event will be a great resource for you! The event will feature all of the other good stuff too, including our new Saturday bounties which were a huge success! See you all there!
