This has been a busy week in the bowling world. From the PBA Kokomo Classic, the PWBA Greater Detroit Regional, the PBA Junior National Championships, and the Lumberton USBC City Tournament on the home front, bowlers of all skill levels have been busy fighting their way to the top. In this blog, I will be highlighting each of these events individually.
The PBA Kokomo Classic ran from Tuesday, March 21, 2023, to Friday, March 24, 2023. As it is with any Professional Bowler's Association tournament, during the Kokomo Classic, some of the best bowlers in the world battled it out to bring home a National Tour Title and the prize money. For this particular tournament, the first place winner earned $25,000. For this season, this is an average payout for a National Tour Title, while winning a major title earns you $100,000. The tournament started out with a field of 64 bowlers who bowled three six game rounds of qualifying. After these rounds of qualifying, the field was cut to 24 who bowled another six game round of qualifying on Thursday night. The field was then cut to 12 bowlers, who bowled their final six games of qualifying on Friday morning. The top four after 30 games of qualifying went on to bowl a stepladder final where the four seed (Graham Fach) bowled the three seed (Matt Ogle). The winner of that match bowled the two seed (EJ Tackett) , and the winner of that match bowled the one seed (Packy Hanrahan). Tackett was looking for his 4th win of the season, while Fach and Hanrahan were both bowling for their first ever National Tour Title. Ogle was looking for his first ever singles title, but he and his doubles partner Sean Rash did claim a doubles title in 2019 during the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship. To begin the stepladder finals, in a tight match, Ogle defeated Fach 212-206. Ogle went on to defeat Tackett in a runaway 267-229 game, partly due to the gutter ball thrown by Tackett in the beginning of the game. Ogle then moved on to the title match where he faced Hanrahan and ended up losing 268-214, giving Hanrahan his first career National title.
The PWBA Greater Detroit Regional was held yesterday March 25, 2023. Regionals can kind of be looked at like like the B league in basketball, the USFL in football, or the minor leagues in baseball. Regionals are where the bowlers go that are not quite ready for the professional tours but they are getting close to getting there. Regionals are a good starting point for bowlers looking to bowl the national tours one day, and they can help you gain insight about how you would hold up if you were to go bowl a national event. While I am not quite at the regional tournament level yet, I am working hard to be there by next year's regional tour season. Both the women's and men's tours hold regionals, but this particular regional was held on the women's side. Regionals are shorter than national tournaments, and their prize funds are smaller. The prize fund for the PWBA Greater Dallas Regional shows that the first place prize for the event was $2,200. Bowlers in this tournament bowled an eight game round of qualifying after which the field was cut to the top four bowlers. These four bowlers bowled in stepladder finals with the same format mentioned above in the PBA Kokomo Classic section. The winner of this regional was the number three seed Andrea Behr who climbed the ladder, first defeating Alexis Runk (211-203), going on to defeat Victoria Giardina (224-219), and finally moving on to win the title against the one seed Jodi Woessner (197-185). This was Behr's first Regional Title.
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| Andrea Behr after winning the PWBA Greater Dallas Regional (picture taken from this link) |
The PBA Junior Tour was started in 2020, sadly right when I was becoming too old to participate in the tournaments. The PBA Junior tour consists of several different regional tournaments and has divisions for both boys and girls. The winners of each regional in each division then bowl against each other in a national championship where the top two boys and top two girls get to bowl on national TV for the title. After the title is awarded, the junior bowlers get to pair up with PBA and PWBA professionals in a doubles competition. This year's PBA Junior National Championships just aired yesterday. The top two girls were 13 year old Bella Love Castillo and 15 year old Kaitlyn Stull. Castillo is one of the first girls to be known for her two-handed style of bowling. Stull is from Raleigh, NC, and I have bowled in tournaments against her sister, Grace Stull, multiple times. Stull ended up taking home the title, beating Castillo 227-205. The top two boys were 17 year old Zach Andresen and 17 year old Jakob Robertson. Robertson defeated Andresen in a close 217-213 match to take home the win and the title. Stull, along with PWBA bowler Danielle McEwan, also won the doubles event. This is the first year a female duo has won the doubles event in the tournament.
Below is a video that shows some of the highlights from the championship.
The Lumberton USBC City Championships is an annual amateur bowling tournament that features singles, doubles, and team events. This is the first year that I have personally bowled in the adult version of the tournament instead of the Lumberton Youth City Championships. The tournament ran from Friday, March 17th, to Sunday, March 19th. The tournament was technically last week, but official results were posted this week, so I decided to include it in this blog. As I mentioned before, the tournament is made up of four events. For the singles, doubles and team events, you bowl three games an event. For all events, the games you bowled in the doubles, singles, and team events are all added together. In other words, all events is your nine game total. You could choose to bowl all nine games in one day, or you could choose to bowl teams one day and doubles and singles another. My team and I decided to bowl the team event on Friday night, and the singles and doubles events on Saturday. The team event did not go as well as it could have gone, and we ended up finishing in seventh place. On Saturday, my doubles partner and I both bowled well and ended up finishing in fourth place. In singles, I was able to pull out a big 630 series for a singles and doubles six game combined series of 1202. In singles, I finished in fourth place, and I also placed fourth in all events. I did not get to take any pictures or videos of the actual bowling that took place during the tournament, but I can share pictures of the standings sheets. The score sheets only show through 20th place for all events, doubles and singles, and to 11th for the team event. These were by far not the only individuals/teams that entered the tournament. This was a handicap event, so that is also added into the totals on the standing sheets, and last names have been removed for privacy purposes. (Please ignore my team name. I did not have any part in choosing it. 😂)
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| Singles Standings (Sorry it's a bit blurry.) |
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| All Events Standings |
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| Doubles and Teams Standings |
Hey! I did not know that you could win so much money sometimes playing bowling! There is so much more to bowling than I ever thought! This is really cool!
ReplyDeleteWow! I did not know competitive bowling was so big! The cash prizes and regional and national tours blew me away! Great post!
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