HOLIDAY BOWL

champs Dylan Macon & Lacey Shelton

        Dylan Macon and Lacey Shelton outwitted, outlasted, and outplayed their fields as the sole survivors of exciting JBT 'survivor' format action at Albuquerque's Holiday Bowl.

        In 'survivor', an equal number of bowlers are on each pair, with the lowest score on each pair eliminated game by game, creating do-or-die moments all throughout the center all day long.  21 scratch survivors were eventually carved down to six, and in that round, Chris Brown eliminated top seed Jimmy Ewell 204-174, Dylan Macon eliminated Cortez Schenck 241-139, and Aaron Johnston stopped previous day's champion Cameron Smith 258-156. 

        In the resulting three-way match, Macon's 242 was plenty, while Brown converted back to back splits in the ninth and tenth frames to edge Johnston 193-185, setting up an all-West Texas A&M title match.  The finale was a grindout on the very difficult 'Atlanta' pattern, and a lesson that a match doesn't always have to be high scoring to be exciting.  After a split and short count from Brown in the ninth frame, both bowlers were tied.  Dylan filled 20 in the tenth, and watched as Chris flushed the first strike, but left a 2-8-10 on the second ball, which we was unable to convert, giving Macon the thrilling 171-169 win and his first career JBT title.

        Eighteen handicap survivors were also whittled down to six, and in that round, Shelton eliminated Steven Acuff 204-187 (Steven's top five ties him with Drew Stern for teh all-time lead in handicap division top 5 finishes), John Ellis spared a washout in the tenth to defeat Jacqueline Valenzuela 216-210, and in the match of the day, Cerra Strickland and Audrey Campbell tied at 231, forcing a rolloff which Cerra won to advance.

        In the three-way semifinal game, Shelton's 228 and Strickland's 214 advanced, while Ellis bowed out in third with 194.  This created a title match between two cousins and good friends, and just like scratch, came down to the last shot.  After leaving a 6-pin on her first shot in the tenth, it was make it and win or miss it and lose for Lacey, and she calmly picked up the spare for the 199-192 win and the second title of her JBT career.

        Lacey's big sister Wendy won the day's Women's Series event with a win over Adel Wahner, the first of three wins needed to qualify for the All-Conference Girls' Championship in the summer of 2012.

        Thanks as always to the crew at Holiday for a great job hosting our event. Over $3,000 was awarded over the weekend- if you want your chance at all this fun and excitement, check out our schedule and come on out to the next JBT event!