Our event this weekend was at AMF McRay and we had a pretty large turnout! We had 92 total entries (72 qualifying and 20 economy parlays) with 27 prize winners and a 1 in 3.41 cash ratio, paying out $4,300 in main prize funds. The players bowled on the 35ft Cheetah oil pattern that provided a lower scoring pace, but provided some decent scores later in the event.
Justin O’Donnell hit the Momma’s Mystery Pot winner worth $500 with a score of 177! Your winner of the drawing for the free plastic ball, with the option to upgrade to any high-performance Track ball for $99.00, was Marcus White!
There were 22 competitors who made it to the cashers round, plus Kyler Adams, who used his last redemption (total of 23 competitors). The A Division would see Alec Johnson (+78) emerge as the #1 seed and his opponent would be Kyler Adams (+57), making good use of that exemption. The C Division would have Marcus White (+79) as the #1 seed, and he would take on Maddisen Rook (+27). The B Division was insanely tight with the #1 seed being Jim Haines (+31) and ended up having a tie for the second spot with Alan Kudlock and Lenny Grom, each at +30. By strikeforce rule, this tie to make the semifinal round needed to be broken by a 9/10th frame rolloff. Allan had the higher qualifying score, making him the higher seed for this rolloff. He elected to start the match and finish last. Allan had 7 pins of handicap and Lenny had 6.2 pins of handicap in this rolloff. Allan started it off with a strike, putting the pressure on Lenny. Lenny would spare a 2-4-5 combo in his first frame, however, he left the exact same leave in the 10th and unfortunately missed it, meaning Allan would need just 7 pins with his 2 shots to move on. Allan stepped up and got all 10 to secure his way into the B Division semifinals.
The A Division title match proved to be a strike fest coming all the way down to the final frames. However, Alec only missed once through 9 frames which was too much for Kyler to overcome, especially since he was giving 12 pins to Alec. Final scores in that match would be high with it being 290-247 with pins.The B Division would medium scoring with Marcus taking the early lead over Maddisen. Marcus was able to maintain that lead through the rest of the match, beating Maddisen 226 -204. The C Division semifinals was a blowout with Jim shooting a massive 293 to Alan’s 225.
Going into the Finals, all three finalists would be looking for their first AHT SFT title along with the $1,000 first place prize.
The finals would be “boring” in a sense that we knew the winner about half way through the match. However, there would be a chance to make Strikeforce history. Alec started the match with only strikes, and his opponents, Marcus and Jim, would make mistakes early on that gave Alec a very large lead through 6 frames, relieving the pressure off from trying to win the title, but he was trying to go for history to be the first person to shoot a perfect game in the finals. Alec made it all the way to the 11th shot before he missed a little left and would 3-7. He would finish with a 287 scratch (299 with pins) which would beat both opponents by over 100 pins which would be plenty to win his 1st AHT SFT title. He also parlayed his way to the win! Marcus would finish 2nd, and Jim 3rd. This was a change of scenery from the last couple finals where they have been coming down to literally the last ball.
Thank you to everyone that came out this weekend to bowl our tournament. We can’t run tournaments like these without you guys! Thanks to Lewis and the entire staff at AMF McRay for having us out this weekend, making this event run smoothly, and providing us with some of the best customer service I’ve seen in a bowling center. Also, thanks to Craig and Liz for helping run the event and a huge shoutout to Morgan Foster for completing her first day of training! She is one of our new check-in people and will be a familiar face moving forward. Our goal is to train a couple more check-in people to help me (Joshua Molloy) out in future events so that Craig and Liz do not have to work the events in the future. If you are interested in helping out with future events, please click here to apply! As always, if you have any feedback, please let us know how we can further accommodate bowlers and improve our tournaments. We’ll be back in two weeks for a 2-squad tournament at Bowlero Kyrene. See ya there!
