JOHNSON LANES

champs Kris George & Derek Acuff

    Kris George and Derek Acuff captured JBT titles in exciting Arizona Conference action at Sun City West's Johnson Lanes.

    The scratch division used our 'pba' format, with best 2-of-3 matches after a cut to the top 16 bowlers.  A statistically unlikely round of 16 saw 7 of the 8 higher seeds eliminated, including #1 Kyle King (who still won over $400 in brackets), #2 Greg Garbera, #3 Shawn Peters, and #4 DJ Sloan.  Only #7 Miguel Lopez survived the carnage, by blasting a 289 in the deciding game against #10 Riley Dempsey.

   In the round of 8, #8 Jeff Williams beat #16 Anthonhy Tripi 2-1; #13 George beat #11 David Johnston 2-1; #14 Rachelle Davis swept Lopez 2-0; and #12 Brian Weyrauch beat #15 Courtney Dutton 2-1.

  In semifinal matches, Weyrauch beat Davis 238-186, and George defeated Williams 236-189, to set up the title match.  Weyrauch had survived a 127 game in game one of the tournament to roar back and not only make the cut, but run all the way to the finals, but he ran into the wrong opponent in George, who is starting to get on one of his patented hot streaks that have punctuated his stellar JBT career.  Kris remained in control the whole match, and won the game 223-188 for his 19th career JBT title, tying him for 5th on our all-time list.

   #8 seed Danny Varholdt opened up the 8-person handicap stepladder finals with a 241 game that beat fine efforts from Brandon Webster (236) and Brooks Gould (213).  In round two, Zach Simon blasted a 264 to defeat Varholdt (226) and Steven Acuff (210).  Derek Acuff then avenged his brother's loss with a 232 game that eliminated Simon (187) and Josh Shoup (219), who had the game won until Derek's clutch tenth frame double.

    Top seed Taylor Coleman was enjoying his best JBT event in quite a while, but had his hands full with Acuff.  Despite an early lead for Taylor, Derek did exactl;y what he did in the last match, firing a string of strikes late to pu the game away.  His 275-245 win earned him his first career JBTtitle.

   Joe Lewandowski and Tanner Hill each 'felt the impact' of our Impact Challenge, winning bonus $50 scholarships for making the scratch and handicap cuts, courtesy of Impact Pro Shop, a great JBT sponsosr located at 99th and Bell- check them out!

  Thanks as always for the great folks at Johnson Lanes for opening up their private center for our Tour.  Over $2,100 in scholarships to juniors of all ages and averages was awarded to the field- want in on all this fun?  Get on down to the next JBT event, it's as simple as that!

For more info, feel free to write us at jbtsouthwest@aol.com.