SAM'S TOWN

champs Kyle King & Jake Childers

        Kyle King crushed the pins en route to a milestone victory, while Jake Childers tasted victory for the first time, in exciting JBT Mojave Conference action at Sam's Town Bowling Center.

        The house pattern yielded strikes all day, leading to the 4th highest scratch cut in JBT history- at +96, that's just shy of a 220 average to be in the top half of the field!  Matt Herbert and Mark Curtis opened up the scratch division stepladder finals with an appropriately strike-filled match, with Herbert defeating Curtis 267-264, as Marks' lone open in an 11-strike game proved fatal.  Herbert used that momentum to then defeat Devin Bidwell 238-194, setting up one of our favorite situations- a sibling matchup.  Matt's brother Zach fired 268 in game eight to move from 8th to 2nd for the finals, but got it going too late against his big bro, and Matt came away with the 226-215 win to advance to the title match.

        Top seed Kyle King flirted with our all-time five game record before falling short, and gave our 8-game record an even more serious run, before again falling 'short'- a strange term for leading the event by over 150 pins.  After being denied in his two previous attempts for his 40th title, King was not to be stopped this time, beating Herbert 256-216 for the landmark win.  King becomes only the 2nd bowler in our history to amass 40+ titles, and is now just short of all-time leader Steven Black's mark of 42.

        James Gabour and Teo Cipriaso opened up the handicap stepladder finals with a classic of their own, as James edged Teo 222-221.  Alex Zwingmann then came up with a huge game in a 277-246 defeat of James Gabour.  Samantha Meyers (it's her 'town', after all) then defeated Zwingmann 237-206 to advance to the title match.

        Top seed Jake Childers had his best JBT performance by far en route to the top seed.  The two-hander with a physical and bowling style resemblance to superstar Osku Palermaa (on the same day that Palermaa was qualifying for a PBA TV show) put on a show of his own, winning the match 258-228 to capture a long-awaited first career JBT title.

        Both bowlers won using Ebonite bowling balls, adding $100 scholarships each to their championship hauls.  Both are also proud of their ties with Impact Bowling, one of the JBT's major sponsors.  In all, almost $1,500 was awarded to bowlers of all averages- want in on all this fun?  Check out our schedule and get yourself down to the next JBT event- it's really that simple!