NM-TX INVITATIONAL

champs Billy Read & Josh Demick

        Billy Read and Josh Demick earned $1,000 scholarships each as champions of the 2011 JBT NM-TX Conference Invitational Tournament, hosted by Bowl El Paso.

        Read had a slower season than he'd hoped for, but turned that all around with a completely dominant performance all day.  He took over the lead in game three of qualifying en route to the top seed, then proceeded to go 8-1 in matchplay to win the title.  William Entsminger eventually emerged from the two-loss matches to take on Billy, and needed two wins to take away the title.  The always-tough veteran looked good through seven frames, but then Billy strung the last five strikes to finish at an even 200 to force Entsminger to double.  William's first shot in the tenth came up high, and locked up the win for Read.  The championship was the 6th of Billy's JBT career, and second major, having won the Main Event handicap division back in 2007.  Matt Helmick finished third (joining both brothers in the finals for a rare trifecta), early leader Danny Cobine finished fourth, and Sara Vargas turned in an excellent performance to round out the top five.

        Demick qualified sixth for matchplay, and after an opening game loss, never tasted defeat again, winning eight in a row to take the title.  The last opponent in Demick's way was Kayla Goad, who was eager for a shot at revenge, as Josh and Kayla played a classic title match earlier this year in Lubbock, with Josh squeezing out the high-scoring win.  Unfortunately for Kayla, who was the top qualifying seed, she couldn't quite catch up to Demick, and in the end Josh's 212-201 win was good for his second career JBT title, first major, and the $1,000 scholarship windfall.  Cerra Strickland finished in third, it was Joey Balistreri in fourth, and Zachary Harvey completing the final five.

        The top 20 point scorers now advance to the 2011 JBT Touring Players Championship in August.  The NM-TX Conference will start its new season in early September- keep checking the website for all the schedule details and everything else we have in store for 2011-12!

        Thanks as always to the crew at Bowl El Paso for hosting our event, which awarded over $6,500 in scholarships to the 63 qualifiers.