A large field turned out for the JTBA’s annual September trip to Beaver Vu Bowl in Dayton. Attendance was up thanks to the Saturday Jr. Gold Qualifying tournament, and we’d like to extend our congratulations to Craig Hanson as well as Christina Oschman for winning the respective divisions on Saturday.

Chris CreeksAs the event Sunday got under way, it was clear from the start that scores were going to be high, as we had a perfect game straight out the gate in game one. All told, there were three perfect games, and two eight hundred series rolled during the event. Congratulations go out to Wes Stienecker, Austin Bolds, and Paul Benedict for the perfectos. The 800 Series were rolled by Benedict, as well as Kevin Black.
On the guys side, it was Paul Benedict of Wyandotte, MI pacing the field during qualifying with a total score of 1512, a blistering 252 average. Our cut score was 1367. Once match play started however, #16 seed Chris Creeks, Zelienople PA, marched his way through match play, defeating #2 Jimmy Cook of Indianapolis in the title match 206-207, 236-194 and 216-195. Cook had advanced to the finals by besting Brighton, MI’s Eric Bracken in the semis, while Creeks defeated John Essenmacher of Lenox, MI.

Tori MetzgerIn the ladies division, it was Palm Harbor FL’s Ashly Galante who paced the field with a six game total score of 1321. Cut score was Tori Metzger of Van Wert OH at Plus 8. As in the guys division, the cut number proved to be a winner, as Metzger marched her way through match play defeating Galante 2-1, as well as Sarah Germano of Rochester NY, in the semi-final, before besting Ashley West of Westerville OH in the final 194-188 and 227-211. West had advanced to the final by defeating Cincinnati OH’s Michelle Ostrowski in the semi finals 2-1.

We would also like to take a moment to discuss the scoring pace of the Dayton Open. Since taking over the JTBA three years ago, we have instituted a lane maintenance procedure designed to challenge our players and prepare them for Collegiate Bowling, Team USA, and other adult tournament groups. Randy Hart, PBA Central Region Lane Maintenance Director has been gracious enough to assist us in this process by sending lane patterns to our host centers each month. It is the responsibility of the JTBA Board to ensure that the lanes are conditioned to our standards. Somehow, something happened at the Dayton Open which resulted in a much higher scoring pace than what we expected. We would like to apologize to our members and guests who were in Dayton for not providing scoring conditions which our members have come to expect. Rest assured we are taking steps to ensure that such scoring conditions do not occur in the future.

Looking toward the future, our next event will be the JTBA Sport Bowling Challenge at Randy Hart’s Cedar Lanes in Sandusky on September 30th. We will be using a retro JTBA format for this event, which will be USBC Sport Bowling Certified. All bowlers will bowl a 6 game qualifying block, after which we will cut to the top ½ in each division, including ties, who will return after a short break for the lanes to be reconditioned with a second sport pattern, and roll another 6 game block. At the conclusion of these two six game blocks, the top 5 males and 4 females based on 12 game pinfall will advance to stepladder finals. We look to have a good turnout at Cedar as we hope to draw many bowlers from the AHIBC Conference Match taking place in Pittsburgh on Saturday the 29th.