Location:
We had another great weekend with a minor event at Glenfair lanes. The event drew 71 total entries with 42 qualifying entries and 29 economy parlay entries. We also had 20 cashers, a 1 in 3.5 cash ratio and a total payout of of over $5,000 in main and side event payouts. We had another great turn out and positive response for our minor event format. We had more good signs regarding some of the changes that the members made to start this season. The divisions, once again, had a very balanced number of entries. Also, some of the top amateurs came out again to compete in the A division. While, the newly eligible haven’t had any success yet, they very well could have in this event. One of the bowlers had a pain staking low game 3, and the other was not in the divisional insurance or they would have advanced.
While the new changes continue to look promising, the other thing that continues is the SFT AHT family coming together, bringing new members and competing with one another and having a good time while doing it. We want to welcome Jason Smith, Joseph Schmidt, Lisa Sjoberg, and Matt Tom to the SFT AHT family! We hope you all had a good time in your first event, and we look forward to seeing you at the next one. We want to send a special congrats to Lisa Sjoberg on advancing to the quarter finals in her very first event with the SFT. She also did it through the economy parlay! Also congrats to Charlie Price who also was a parlay power player with Lisa this weekend!
The players bowled on a 38ft Atlanta pattern that the club hasn’t bowled on before. Most of the members said they expected the pattern to play much easier than it did. While most of the patterns we bowl on get easier as the squads go on, this pattern seemed to get harder. However, it is difficult to know if that has more to do with the pattern or the bowling center, as Glenfair Lanes is known for being tricky.
The semifinal matches were #1 seed Dylan Taylor, and #2 seed Charlie Price in the A division, #1 seed Ben Spencer and #2 seed Dave Nelson in the B division, and #1 seed Mike Martinez and #2 seed Eric Flick. All of the matches were fairly close, but none finished in real dramatic fashion. Certainly, not in the same way that the final match did. Dylan was able to become your A division champion for the 2nd time in less than a month, and Mike Martinez and David Nelson were division champions for the first time in their SFT AHT career.
The final match was very back and forth the entire time. Going into the 10th frame, all three players could mathematically win the event and the $600 first place prize. David Nelson finished the match first, and didn’t do much to put pressure on the other two. Mike was also not able to do more then a spare in the 10th frame. This mean that the narrow lead that Dylan had was all he needed as long as he matched Mike and Dave’s 10th frame. He only opened one other time the entire game, so it seemed very unlikely that Dylan wouldn’t be able to spare to win his 3rd SFT AHT title. Dylan threw a great shot, it was clearly going to be in the pocket. Dylan started to walk out a very good shot, but it ball didn’t go through the pins as expected and he left a pocket 8-10 split. He was unable to convert the spare which gave him a final score of 200 with handicap, which wasn’t enough to surpass Mike’s 207. What a finish!
We look forward to seeing everyone at our next event on Sunday, January 25th at AMF McRay lanes. It will be our 4th tournament in a row to our 2015 season that dedicates to having a SFT event nearly every single weekend.
Final Match: