champs Kris George & Steven Cheatham

Kris George and Steven Cheatham captured both enormous glass cacti as well as $1,000 first place scholarship prizes in the 36th Annual Desert Open, presented by the Junior Bowlers Tour and held at AMF Deer Valley.

The toughest lane conditions of the whole year were laid out to test the bowlers, and they found it so demanding that an average of just under 170 was enough to make the scratch cut to the round of 32!  Top seed Kevin Saunders, who led the 14-game qualifier at -41, cruised past #32 Amanda Falk in that round, but #2 Matt Jones had the opposite experience, swept out 4-0 by #31 Lana Lycan.  Meanwhile, #21 George found himself trailing #12 Will Jackson 0-3.  Kris eeked out game 4 172-170, snuck by 170-161 in game 5, squeezed through game six 180-164, and in a most dramatic game seven, won by just one pin, 182-181, to advance out of round one- wow!

Moving on to the round of 8, Saunders defetaed #8 Bryanna Caldwell 4-1, #3 Theo Douthit got by #6 Kyle King 4-3, George kept rolling with a 4-2 win over #20 Kris Beach, and in a back and forth battle, #23 Brent Bowers edged #15 BJ Baker 4-3.

In one game semifinal matches, Bowers doubled in the tenth to defeat Douthit 178-168, while George caught fire with a 267-225 win over Saunders to set up the title match.

The unbelievable roll for Kris continued in the title game, as he easily defeated Bowers, the 2006 Main Event champ, 213-173, for his 13th career JBT title.

The handicap division was cut to the top 16 after eight qualifying games.  In the round of 16, 7 of the top 8 seeds advanced, led by qualifying leader Rebeca Reguero, #2 Steven Cheatham, #3 Jay Prewitt, and #4 James Hawkins.

In the round of 8, Reguero ousted #8 Kyle Klein 4-1, Hawkins stopped #10 Kyle Karpovich 4-1, Cheatham defeated #5 Kristen O'Neal 4-1, but #7 Rebecca Meils was able to pull off the upset, beating Prewitt 4-1.

In the semifinals, Cheatham defeated Meils 234-198, while Hawkins beat Reguero 246-209, to set up the title match.

Hawkins was giving 83 pins to Cheatham in the title match, and that proved to be too much on the championship pair, even for his devastating strike ball.  Cheatham won the match 215-183 for his first career JBT title.

Thanks to Peggy Cianciola and everyone at Deer Valley for another fantatsic job hosting our Tour.  Peggy's concern for junior bowling is top-notch and we deeply appreciate all she does for junior bowling and JBT!