CACTUS BOWL

champs Kyle King & Dominic Luna

     Kyle King continued his totally dominant run through this season's Tour, while Dominic Luna kept up the fraternal feeling this weekend, with victories at Cactus Bowl in JBT Arizona Conference action.

    A very challenging PBA Viper pattern resulted in cut scores drastically lower than the previous day's house pattern, putting an emphasis on shotmaking for all bowlers.  Adding even more pressure in the scratch division was our exciting Nervewracker format, which always proves to be exactly that.  Top seed Christian Jensen had a look on the 1-board nobody else could replicate, leading qualifying by more than 100 pins and then avoiding the first-round jinx by firing 474 for two games to sweep #16 Andy Holick.  #2 Miguel Lopez and #4 Randy Cote also advanced, but #3 Greg Garbera was tripped up in the round's only nervewracker rolloff by #14 Chris Varholdt.

    The round of 8 was full of upsets, with #10 Jacob Smith being the only non-upset getting by Varholdt 8-6 in the one-shot rolloff that follows all 1-1 match ties.  #5 Kyle King nervewracked Lopez 10-6, and #13 Kyle Karpovich won his rolloff against #6 Cameron Smith 9-7.  That left Jensen and #9 James Hawkins, who came up with the second longest rolloff in JBT history.  After both striking in round one, they tied at 8 in round two, struck again in round three, tied at 9 in round four, and finally, James got by 8-7 in the fifth shot to advance, leaving the crowd breathless.

    In semifinal matches, King was able to sweep Smith, while Hawkins and Karpovich went to another exciting rolloff, with Karpovich escaping to set up an all-Kyle title match.

    King, who is on pace to not just beat, but destroy, all current JBT records, gave Karpovich no chance as he, despite a great performance to get to his first scratch title match, could not keep up with King's strike festival. King won both finals games to earn the 23rd title of his JBT career, moving him alone in 3rd place on the all-time title list, passing Andrew Cain.

    The handicap division had plenty of excitement also, as Gregg Kern opened up the stepladder finals with a 243-181 win over Cody Vanderweyst.  Maura Swaim then ended Kern's day, 235-178, after which James Burke did the same to Swaim, winning 227-182 to reach the title match.

   Top seed Dominic Luna was looking to repeat what the Lebbs family pulled off the day before, with one brother winning to join the other as JBT champions.  The outcome of this match was in doubt until the final frame, where Luna only got 4 pins on his first ball, but was able to regroup and make the spare, squeaking by a great effort from Burke 218-213 for his first JBT title.

   Over $1,700 was awarded to the field, who were treated to great hospitality as usual by Dale Schnell and the whole staff at Cactus.  Wanna get in on all this excitement?  Come on down to the next JBT event, it's that simple!