Our event was at Lakeview Lanes in Sun City this weekend. It is a center that we aren't at that often, but when we are it is always a pleasure. They take great care of the center and it has a vibe and atmosphere that is hard to find in the rest of the Arizona bowling centers. It has a full resturant and acts as an ammenity to the senior community in Sun City. The event drew a good turn out for only having two squads. There were 66 total entries (45 qualifying & 21 economy parlay), 20 total cashers, a 1 in 3.3 cash ratio and we paid out a little over $3,000.00 in main and side event prize fund. The players bowled on a very tough 40ft Kegel Highway to Hell oil pattern that had very low cut scores for the day. Most divisions took in the +50 range to advance, which means that they only had to bowl 10-20 pins over average for the entire series, which is bowling a small amount over your average each game. The medium length pattern allowed players to play a variety of angles including down and in and deep inside angles.
As always we like to welcome our newest SFT bowlers! David Chenowth, Joseph Deluca, and Thomas Torrez all joined us for thier first tournament this weekend! We appreciate you guys coming out to give the event a try and we hope to see you at another one! Congrats to Joseph and Thomas on both also making the cut in their first event! It's always a pretty rough first time experience to bowl in a new bowling center, or new tournament, especially on a very difficult sport pattern.
The quarter finals is typically on fresh and the scores are lower because of it. However, since this was a two squad event, the quarter finals was bowled when the 2pm squad normally bowls and typically (but not always) the 2pm squad has the highest scores. Well, that is what happened at this event. The quarter finals had pretty high cut scores. It also was due to the fact that at 5 bowlers in each division, the 1 in 3 cut ratio to the semi finals only advanced 1 bowler, so we went straight into the final match. The cut scores in the quarter finals averaged a little higher requiring +90 on average to advance as the division champion. The division champions were James Roethle in A at a nice +120, Andre Murillo in B at +65 and Andrian Luna in C at +102
The final match was a pretty good one. It would have been easy to assume that James Roethle was the one to beat, as he was the only person in the final match that had experience bowling for a title and he was the number seed after the previous round. However, it didn't quite work out that way. He got off to a very slow start and missed some easy spares at the end to really make the match only come down to Adrian and Andre. Starting the 9th frame Andre had a good sized lead on Adrian, but the 9th frame really mixed it up. Andre ended up splitting and opening while Adrian ended up striking to set him up for the 10th. This still gave Andre the small lead, but it was going to come down to the 10th frame.
Adrian finished first and a strike on his first ball would have put pressure on Andre. Adrian couldn't quite meet those expectations and missed to the right on a condition that you couldn't miss to the right much on. He was hoping to get the 10 pin out and leave an easier spare, but a wash out stood in front of him and he had to convert it to put pressure on Andre. His attempt at the wash out wasn't where he wanted it either missing it by a decent margin, which meant that Andre only needed to knock down 9 pins to win. If it were 8, it would be a lot easier, but at 9 pins, you can't leave a number of splits that would result in 8 total pins. Andre just split the last frame, but his first shot in the 10th was a great one, striking convincingly and getting him his first ever SFT AHT title and $700.00!
