Well we are off the ground with our 6th SFT AHT season being kicked off at Brunswick Mesa. The event was a huge success with 120 entries (74 qualifying entries & 46 economy parlay), 30 cashers, a 1 in 4.7 cash ratio and a payout of well over $5,000.00 in main and side event prizefund! We want to thank all of our long time members and new bowlers for making the start of our season such a good one. The players bowled on the 38ft WTBA Atlanta oil pattern which had some very high scores.Players played a variety of angles and places on the lane from straighter around 2nd arrow, to deeper inside angles hooking the lane quite a bit. The average cut scores were around +80 which means the players had to bowl about 20-30 pins over average per game to make the cut. Which is on the higher side of our normal cut scores.
As always we want to welcome all of our newest bowlers that joined us this weekend for their first ever SFT AHT event. I know I write this a lot, but it's awesome that even after 5 years of tournaments we are not only getting new bowlers, but 9 new bowlers at this event that have never bowled before! A big thanks to Gary Roff, Randy Taylor, Russell Taylor, Alex Olson, John Hudson, Mark Yakich, Todd Schermitlzer, Ben Wacks, and Frank Oliver for coming out to give the events a try! We welcome you all to the SFT AHT family! A special congrats to Mark Yakich on being a new bowler who also advanced to the quarter finals in his first event. Also to Eric Carroll for being this event's only Parlay Power Player advancing all the way to the quarter finals and just barely missing the semi's through the $25 economy parlay option.
The quarter finals was also high scoring with most of the cuts to the semi-final round being the same level of scoring as the qualifying. Ron Gonzales squared off against #1 seed Jason Satterlee for the A division title. Taylor LaRue was the #1 seed in B and bowled against Ben Dewberry. The C division had #1 seed Dave Lloyd taking on Renee Sandoval for the C division title. The B and C division matches were pretty well decided before the final frames, with Ben Dewberry and Dave Lloyd moving on to the final match with decisive victories. The A division final match was about as good as it gets. Jason Satterlee finished the match first needing three strikes to shut Ron out. His first ball struck but his second got 9 which he spared. This meant that Ron had to throw the first two strikes to win. A strike nine-spare would be a time. Ron also had to strike in the 8th and 9th to put himself in that position. Ron's first strike was a light swisher, but a good shot. His second shot was another really good one that struck and gave him the victory and an opportunity at an all time record of 7 SFT AHT titles!
The final match was a really good one. In the first 3 frames there wasn't a single player with a spare. Ron had 3 strikes and the other two players all opens. It looked like Ron was going to win by a landslide. However, by the 3rd frame Ron had basically already made up the handicap difference since he was the highest average player in the finals. It just meant he had to beat the two lower averaged players scratch from the 3rd frame moving forward. Easy enough, right? Well right as it seemed Ron was going to have it locked up, Ben Dewberry threw a huge string of strikes in the middle of the game to get back into the game and take the lead by the 9th frame. Ron was unable to put any strikes together the last few frames, which gave Dewberry his 5th SFT AHT title!
Thanks to everyone for coming out! We look forward to seeing everyone again at our next event at AMF Christown lanes on January 29th!
