Defalco & Creager Capture Opening Event Titles

The PJBT kicked off its 18th Season of Events with our traditional opening event at 222 Dutch Lanes in Ephrata, PA.  This event is anticipated every year as the kickoff to a new season, after being off for weeks leading up to it.

For the first time in PJBT History, we tried running a bowling event with an unannounced sport pattern.  The PJBT will have 3 events like this on the schedule for the season.  This idea came out of the new technology and Junior Gold National Tournament.  This past year, the national event didn’t announce any lane patterns until after the event was over.  We did the same.  This event was conducted on the Kegel “Chichen Itza” pattern.  Bowlers were not aware of the pattern until after the event.  This pattern is one of the new Kegel patterns for this year.

In addition, we began our weekly live-streaming of the finals.  This year PJBT events will have the finals televised from each event and we will re-oil and set a tv setting for our majors only this year.

For this opening event, we had 108 bowlers compete.  We had 69 bowlers in Scratch and 39 in Handicap.  Many of our past bowlers from the Handicap Division moved up to Scratch this year.  Looking forward to watching their development as they move up to the highest ranks of our series. The format for our first major was 6 games / top 40% bowl 3 additional games of match play / top 4 advance to bracket final (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3 – winners bowl each other for the title).

In Scratch, Jarrett Defalco captured the Major Title.  This win was Defalco’s 3rd career PJBT title, as he had 2 titles last season.  Defalco was sitting in a good position out of the gate.  He shot 1351 or +151 for 6 games in qualifying.  This put him in 6th place out of 28 bowlers advancing to match play.  28th place cut after 6 games was +10.  Defalco continued his to succeed in match play.  He went 2-1 in Match Play with scratch games of 224, 266, and 249.  After 9 games, Defalco was seeded 3rd entering the finals.  He only trailed tournament leader Connor Kolessides  and 2nd seed Kurtis Stidd.

In the live-streaming finals, 2nd seed Stidd took #3 Defalco.   Defalco outlasted Stidd 225-193.  In our opening match of the semi-finals, 4th seed DJ Brown defeated #1 seed Kolessides 181-147.  This set up the title match.  It was #3 seed Defalco vs #4 seed DJ Brown.  This match was a survivor of the fittest.  The challenging fresh lane patterns came into play.  Defalco won the match 172-161 to take the title.  Defalco won a $300 top scholarship prize and a glass trophy for the win.

In Handicap, Kelsey Creager captured her first ever PJBT title.  Creager dominated the day, leading the event for most of it.  Creager, who entered the event with a 102 average from last year….shot games in qualifying of 130, 132, 145, 129, 125, and 126.  She stood at 1315 or +115 after 6.  This score had her in the lead of the 16 bowlers advancing to match play.  16th place cut was -58.  In Match Play, she extended her lead.  She went 2-1 with some great scratch games of 188, 154, and 154.  She was the tournament leader entering the bracket final.  The finals saw 3 of our 4 handicap finalists as females.  The only boy in the finals was Cole Oberst.

In the live-streaming finals, #1 Creager took on #4 seed Cole Oberst.  Creager got off to a hot start and never looked back.  She defeated Oberst 227-162.  In the other semi-final, #2 seed Ally McGinley took on #3 seed Breanne Hood.  This match was shot for shot but in the end McGinley defeated Hood 168-157.  This set up the title match as #1 vs #2.  Creager outlasted McGinley in the title match 170-125 to take home the major title.  Creager won a $300 scholarship for the title and the glass bowling pin trophy.

Congrats also to all our scholarship winners on the day.  The top 10 bowlers in Scratch and 5 Bowlers in Handicap earned scholarships.  We also paid a bonus scholarship to Alexis Neuer & Charlize Wanner for being the top finishing girls after qualifying.  In all, we paid out over $2000 in scholarships for our opening event.

We also had some honor scores on our unannounced pattern.  Would like to recognize Nick Diggan who shot 299 during qualifying….and Dylan Zimmerman who shot 803 during Match Play to make a run at the finals.  He finished in 5th thanks to his great match play series.

Next week:  PJBT Regular Season Singles Event at Palmyra Bowl in Palmyra, PA – 10:30 am start on 8/28/16