RIVERSIDE LANES

champ Josh Mullen

        Josh Mullen out-battled a tough field to win the JBT's "Battle Bag" special event at Riverside Lanes in Mt Vernon.

        After five qualifying games on two of the toughest and most opposite patterns- 34 foot Wolf on one lane, 50 foot T of C on the other, the top eight moved on to 'battle bag', a best of 5 match, where the winner of each game removed one of their opponent's three allotted bowling balls from play.  This left Andy Herrmann, for example, down to only a white dot in the fifth and deciding game against Josh's brother Jake Mullen, but Andy pulled out a 198-160 win to advance.  Minnesota bowler Brennan Haugh also survived a game 5 over Ryan Nikolas, while Josh swept Hannah Saunders and Brian Monnette swept Aidghan Ziegler. 

        In the semifinal matches, with two balls to start and best of three games, Mullen swept Haugh, and Herrmann survived in game three against Monnette, to set up the one-game, one-ball title match.

        Scores were understandably low with one ball on two patterns and the after 1 AM match time, but in the end Mullen ground out  a174-148 win for the title, the fifth of his JBT career.

        Huge thanks to Riverside for hosting us on a busy Friday night, as well as to everyone who accepted the challenge and came out for a fun evening of competition.  Want in on this?  Check out our schedule and come on down, that's all you have to do!