KEYSTONE LANES

U17 winner David Schneider, Girls winner Brittany Kolatzny, scratch champ Cortez Schenck, handicap champ Dawson Reese

        One bowler got a long-awaited first win, while another reached a level never seen before, in an exciting kickoff to the 2016-17 JBT So Cal Conference regular season at Keystone Lanes in Norwalk.

      Sergio Torres began the scratch division stepladder finals with a 172-149 grind-out win over first time scratch finalist David Schneider.  2013 Main Event winner Oscar Chan then stopped Torres 224-191 to advance to the title match.

     Cortez Schenck has been off to a slow start this new season, but showed no signs of that here, dominating the tournament to grab the top seed.  He had his hands full on the tricky title match pair though, and a tenth frame open gave Chan a chance in the tenth.  Oscar's first ball in the tenth was wide right though, and that gave Schenck a 197-183 win, and made him the first bowler in JBT history to achieve the 80 title mark for his career.

     Costa Gastouniotis picked up from his hot finish to last season with a 211-162 win over Dustin Yauney to open the handicap division stepladder finals.  Costa then escaped from Jake Hansen 216-210 in a match filled with bad breaks when Hansen's solid-9 in the tenth proved to be the back breaker. 

     Dawson Reese led almost the whole day, and has been oh-so-close to victory many times before, with some tough performances in the title matches.  Not this time, though, as he stayed in control the whole title match, eventually winning 227-189 for a long-sought first career JBT title.

     Reese also played Schneider in the final game of the new U17 division, and Schneider won that match for the first So Cal U17 win.  Brittany Kolatzny began her final JBT season with a win over Kaylee Am-Khong for the day's girls scratch crown.

     Thanks as always to Herbert, Dave, and the team at Keystone for hosting us.   Want in on the fun for all ages and averages?  Just check out our schedule and come on down!