JOHNSON LANES

champs BJ Baker & Tyler Johnson

BJ Baker and Travis Johnson captured JBT titles in exciting Arizona Conference action at Sun City West’s Johnson Lanes.

The scratch division used our exciting nerve-wracker format, where the top 16 bowlers after 5 games advanced to head to head competition where, if tied after two games, bowlers went right to a one-shot rolloff.  After a very high +69 cut to the top 16, round one matches produced 6 of 8 2-0 sweeps.  The only nervewrackers were #10 Chris Varholdt defeating #7 Zach Herbert 10-9, while the other rolloff produced history.  After Caycee Landers fired 299 to tie Miguel Lopez 1-1, they began what turned out to be the longest rolloff in nervewracker history, going an amazing 7 shots before Lopez prevailed 10-9 in round seven- wow!

In the round of 8, #6 Rachelle Davis beat #13 Allie Ijams in an all-female battle, #5 Greg Garbera eliminated Lopez in a 2-shot nervewracker, #15 BJ Baker got by Varholdt 10-9 in a nervewracker, while top seed Mike Armstrong went to a nervewracker as well against #9 Andrew Bienias, winning 9-8 to survive.

In semifinal action, Davis shot 279 against Armstrong to force the nervewracker that she won 10-8, while Baker swept Garbera 2-0 to also reach the finals.

Bowling in her first scratch division finals, Davis lost some of the momentum she had all day, much of that due to Baker not giving her a chance, as he fired a 258 in the deciding game to wrap up the 26^th title of his amazing JBT career.

Eric Vitzthum rolled 213 to open up the handicap division stepladder finals, but it wasn’t quite enough as Joey Longo and Nick Ledvina tied at 218, forcing a two-frame rolloff which Longo won 48-37 to advance.   Longo then gained momentum, firing 264 to beat Riley Dempsey (254) and Robert Atherton (217).  In a semifinal thriller, it was Longo again, rolling 252 to beat Anthony Tripi (183) and points leader Daniel Cotton (243), to advance to the title match.

Top qualifier Travis Johnson, yet another protégé of Peggy Cianciola’s Deer Valley youth program, put on an excellent show all day, and showed no rookie nerves in the title match, wrapping it up with a mark in the tenth for a 217-193 win and his first JBT title.  For Joey, it was another heartbreaking runner-up finish for a Longo brother, JBT veterans without wins despite many appearances in the finals, an anomaly we hope will change soon!

tory and results soon