BOWL EL PASO

champs Cortez Schenck & Montana Cdebaca

        Cortez Schenck stayed on a big-time tear, while Montana Cdebaca experienced JBT victory for the first time, in exciting NM-TX Conference action at Bowl El Paso.

        After five qualifying games, qualifying bowlers competed in 'pick your poison', where higher seeded bowlers earned the right to choose who they wanted to play in head to head matches.  Cortez Schenck easily grabbed the top seed in the scratch division, then got by Bree Vargas and Andrew Esparza in two tough matches, needing big second games in both, to advance to the final game.  In the other 'side' of the bracket, last man in Ahkeen Williams made a bid to become last man standing, getting by Ben Stedman and Curtis Lindeman to advance against Schenck for the title.

        In yesterday's event, Schenck's opponent got off to a slow start, allowing Cortez to cruise.  Unfortunately for Ahkeen, the same thing happened here, as two opens in five frames doomed Williams before he could get going.  Schenck won the match 238-171, sweeping the weekend's events for the third time in a month, and racking up the 54th title of his JBT career.

        Rob McClelon rolled a big game five to earn the qualifying lead, and used that lead to strategically pick #2 qualifier Montana Cdebaca as his first round matchplay opponent.  It's a risk/reward move, and unfortunately for McClelon it backfired this time as Montana eliminated him with a two game win.  Cdebaca used the momentum from that win to beat Vanessa Romero and Justin Hackney to reach the title match.  6 year-old Xzavier Rede (below) stole the show in the other matches, beating Steele Schweinbraten by one pin in his round two match before finally falling to Josiah Ficklin 216-170, advancing Josiah to his first title match.

        Ficklin started very slowly in the title match, and despite a much better second half of the game, he ran out of frames to catch up.  Montana's 205-186 win earned her the first title of her JBT career.

        Schenck wasn't the only one to enjoy a weekend sweep, as Bree Vargas beat Adel Wahner for the second straight day, this time 173-168, for the clean sweep of the weekend's Women's Series events.

        Thanks as always to John Murphy and the team at Bowl El Paso for hosting us.  Want in on all the fun for all ages and averages?  Just check out our upcoming schedule and come on down! 

  Xzavier shows off his third place plaque!