Well, every time we start a new season, it is always exciting. It is exciting to see if the clubs changes and additions from the previous season’s meeting make a difference. The main goal of our meeting in 2014 was to try to grow our A division in 2015. We wanted to get some new bowlers that weren’t eligible before and also restructure the division so that the A division and B division were closer in total entries.
Our first event of the 2015 season drew 116 entries total with 73 qualifying entries and 43 economy parlay entries. We had 30 cashers, a 1 in 3.8 cash ratio and paid out over $4,000.00 in main and side event prize fund. We had new bowlers participate that weren’t eligible before, the A division had 21 total qualifying entries for the weekend and the B division had 24. Needless to say, this first event was a very exciting sign of things to come. We nearly accomplished everything we were searching for in our very first event. We hope that it only continues in this direction as the word spreads and we have more events.
As always we like to welcome all of the bowlers who bowled in their very first SFT AHT event this weekend. Matt Jones, Landyn Carnate, Junior Holguin, Tim Lafferty, Colin Lafferty, and Kim Lafferty all joined us for their very first SFT AHT tournament. We hope you all had a good time and look forward to seeing you at your next event. We also want to congratulate Jon Jones on advancing to his very first quarter finals this weekend. Also congrats to Lea Mester, Eric Schade, and Kim McKay on advancing all the way to the quarter finals through the Economy Parlay side event. Only $25 spent and all of them advanced all the way to the quarter finals. Lea actually rode her $25 all the way to the title match, which is very impressive!
The conditions were very difficult this weekend. The players bowled on the very flat PBA Bear oil pattern. We like to use these harder patterns for our big events like Majors and the season opener. While the participants really fight with nearly 0 margin for error, they tend to enjoy the lower cut scores that are a result of the harder patterns. In many cases when we use these really flat patterns we rename the club from Strike Force to Spare Force. Those that were good spare shooters were the ones that bowled the best this weekend.
The semi-final matches consisted of #1 seed Charlie Price vs #2 seed Kevin Enomoto in the A division. #1 seed Ben Spencer vs #2 seed Hokey Begay in the B division, and #1 seed Lea Mester vs #2 seed Bill Brackett in the C division. The B and C division matches were very close and both came down to the tenth frame. Bill Brackett was unable to strike a second time in the 10th frame which gave Lea the win, and Hokey wasn’t able to double to win his match against Ben. This meant that Lea, Ben and Charlie Price would be moving on to the final match. This was the first time in quite a while that all three #1 seeds won.
The final match was one of those that you could just tell it was a certain person’s day to win. Charlie Price started off with a spare and a string of strikes. He kept it going with a few lucky breaks in there with some good shots and cruised to a huge lead and his first SFT AHT title! The exciting part was Lea Mester throwing two perfect shots in the 10
th frame to snatch 2
nd place from Ben Spencer. She hadn’t doubled the entire game and she threw two great shots under pressure to win $300 more! Great bowling to everyone!
We look forward to seeing you all at our next event at AMF Deer Valley which will feature our very first minor event! This was an event type we added to the 2015 season to help add more events to our schedule. We will see who will be the first ever SFT AHT minor champion! See you all there!
