Kearny Mesa Bowl

champs Cameron Smith & Nick Condon

        A high-scoring, high-drama event at San Diego's Kearny Mesa Bowl kicked off the 2012-13 JBT So Cal season, with Cameron Smith and Nick Condon emerging as the season's first champions.

        With due respect to our champs, much of the biggest excitement of the day had already occurred before the title match.  Steven Manier began the madness by firing a 300 game to open the tournament- thus going +100, averaging 300 for the season, and a slew of other silly statistics after game one.  The perfecto earned Manier an extra $100 as well, for smashing the brand new 1-3-5 jackpot!  Foster Phandanouvong also made his return to the Tour a success, firing a 300 of his own in game four.  It took a 211 average to make the first cut in scratch (with Brandon Wanders winning a rolloff over Luke Holley for the last spot), by far the highest cut Tour-wide this season. 

        If that wasn't enough, Ben Canfield then brought the house down by correctly predicting a strike, then 7 pins, then 5 pins- leaving the 1-2-3-5-7, to win the PowerBowl jackpot and earn a $1,000 scholarship for three shots of bowling!!  He is the 12th bowler to win the PowerBowl jackpot in JBT history, and second in four months.

       Another great story began the scratch stepladder finals, as Oscar Chan and Jakob Butturff played each other yet again in a budding rivalry, and again it was Jakob who got the upper hand, winning 223-211.  Cameron Smith then stopped Butturff 217-203, and followed with a 217-204 win over Billy Dacanay, to reach yet another title match.

        Canfield used the adrenaline surge from PowerBowl to power into the top seed, but didn't haven a good look on the right hand lane in the title match.  The end result was a 248-180 win for Smith, and the 36th title of his JBT career, tying him for third place all time.

        Kyli Selley began the handicap stepladder finals with a 244-206 win over Ricardo Mendoza.  In an all Kylie (or Kyli) round two, Kylie Shishima stopped Selley 223-188.  Anthony Dang then halted Shishima 234-209 to reach his second title match in six days, having finished second at Cliff Castle the week before.

        Nick Condon put on the best performance of his JBT career to easily grab the top seed.  He remained confident in the title game as well, defeating Dang 231-202 for the first title of his JBT career, while the quickly-improving Dang would have to wait another day for that elusive title.

        Brittany Kolatzny earned the day's Imapct Bowling JBT Women's Series title with a 247-224 win over Ashley Dunn, the first of three wins she needs to qualify for the 2013 Girls TPC next summer.

        Thanks as always to the crew at Kearny for a great job hosting us.  You're not going to find another tournament that awards over $2,400 with this amount of entries- so spread the word to all ages and averages, and come on out to the next JBT event!