VICTOR BOWL

scratch champ Marquan Rivers with Leoj Chin, Solomon Salama, and Emily Cheesman; handicap champ Dawson Reese; Priority Girls Scratch winner April McDonnell

        Marquan Rivers had to truly battle for his second win, while Emily Cheesman earned her first trip to the winner's circle, in exciting JBT dual conference action at Victor Bowl.

        Emily began a run up the handicap division stepladder finals with a 221-203 win over Yairi Lubag.  Cheesman then got past Sebastian Huffman 237-206, and followed with a 235-229 thriller over William Robbins to move on to the title game.

        The man chasing William for the all-conference points lead, Dawson Reese, used a big semifinal set to grab the top seed.  In a very well bowled match by both bowlers, Reese came up with a 252-242 win for the 5th title of his JBT career, and inched towards Robbins in what is sure to be a great season-long battle.

        Scratch bowlers were tested by the popular but exhausting Battle Bag, a matchplay format where game by game, the winning bowler takes away a ball from the losers' arsenal.  Twelve battlers were carved down to four, and in those matches #3 Solomon Salama got by #7 Louis Luna 242-151, while #8 Rivers, suffering from a very debilitating leg cramp, was able to get by #13 TJ Rock, who earlier fired a 299 for the high game of the event, 181-157, to set up the title match.

        Aided by the 'mustard cure', Marquan recovered enough to continue at about half speed in the title match.  In a brave effort, he was able to defeat Solomon 193-184 for the second title of his JBT career.

        April McDonnell cruised to the day's Priority Girls scratch win with a 226-162 title match win over Samantha Conti.  Salama found some measure of revenge with a win over qualifying leader Leoj Chin for the day's U17 crown.

        Big thanks to the team at Victor for a great job hosting our event.  Want in on all this fun for all ages and averages?  Just come on down to the next JBT event, that's all you have to do!