We had our first Saturday standard event in quite a long time! The event still had a good turn out with 75 total entries (56 qualifying and 19 economy parlay), 23 cashers and a 1 in 3 cash ratio. The players bowled on a 39ft winding road oil pattern that had very low scores early, but seemed to open up and allow for higher scoring as the day went on. Like usual with our medium length patterns, we get to see a good diversity of styles in the finals since the pattern allows for a variety of angles to be played. The straighter players had a decent line, and higher rev players could also move left and hook it a little bit with success. We want to extend a huge thanks to all of the members for supporting the event on a Saturday.
As always, we like to welcome our new bowlers for this event! Tawna McDonald, Matthew Rainer, and Daniel Barr we hope you all had a good time in your first event and we look forward to seeing you at your next one! We also had some more parlay power players in Brooke Carroll, Matt Zweig and Lea Mester! That is right, two of the three were ladies! We are seeing more and more ladies come out and represent!
Just like during the day, once the lanes were fresh the scores were quite a bit lower. The A division had two friends and teammates at Arizona State University emerge as the semi-finalists. Russ Oviatt was the #1 seed vs #2 seed Matt Zweig. The B division had relatively newcomer Shaun Newman as #1 seed taking on long time veteran Lynn Arthur. In the C division, we had 4 players separated by less than 15 pins. It was #1 seed Mike Dragon vs #2 seed Robert Ervin! Out of all of the semi-finalists we had more players with out SFT AHT titles then with them!
Two of the three semi-final matches came down to the wire. The C division match, Robert Ervin had a hard time settling in, and Mike Dragon jumped out to an early lead and was able to advance to his first ever SFT AHT title match. In the A division, it came down to the 10th frame, but Russ Oviatt threw some clutch shots to shut out Matt and move on to his 3rd SFT AHT title match. Lastly, the B division came down to the last couple frames, but some early opens from Lynn made it hard to come back and Shaun was able to make it to his first ever title match as well!
The final match was a very close one with all three players having a chance in the 10th frame. Russ Oviatt finished first and needed to double to have a chance. He threw a great shot in the 9th and got a messenger to barely get the 10 pin out. His next shot in the 10th frame wasn't as good and he was unable to strike to put the pressure on Mike and Shaun. The next person to finish was Mike who threw a great shot in the 10th to strike and then missed on his second to finish with 212 with handicap which was enough to beat Russ but not shut out Shaun, who could still double in the 10th to beat him. Shaun's first shot was right off of his hand leaving the 1-2-8. Shaun needed to convert to take second, and missed it to the left giving Russ 2nd place and finishing in 3rd. This also meant Mike Dragon would be taking home his first ever SFT AHT title and $600.00!
Thanks to everyone for coming out and we look forward to seeing you all at our next event at Brunswick Tri city bowl next Sunday March 5th!
