Congratulations to the 2011 Superbowl(ing) Champion Kim Molnar for a well deserved and hard-earned victory. Kim has been working very hard on her game in recent months and is a regular at our Sunday morning group lessons at the Gold Coast. Kim has also done some private lessons recently to work on her spare game in preparation for the USBC Open Championships in Reno in May. Kim is bowling on the Learn to Bowl.com team along with her husband Donny. After 4 games of qualifying where the bowlers only counted their 3 highest games, Kim was seeded #1 going into the step-ladder finals. In 2nd place was the always dangerous Drew Onoszko. 3rd seed was the steady George Nieves. The first game in the finals consisted of the #2 and #3 seeds who would battle it out for the opportunity to bowl the blonde bombshell for the title. Drew was steady and relentless as he spared his way to victory over George. George said he wore down after working all night and coming straight to the tournament after getting off work at McCarren Airport. Next up was the title match...Kim vs. Drew. The pressure was on Drew as Kim had been bowling great all day and was getting 37 pins in handicap. Drew had his work cut out for him but the match was virtually over with several frames to go as Kim went on to win scratch and not needing her 37 pins of handicap. Excellent bowling to Kim and everyone. Kim even had her 2 biggest fans in the crowd to cheer her on. I hope that everyone had fun and will be back to bowl again next year.

The final holder of the split prize was Alfred Mitchell who converted the 3-10 baby split in the 10th frame of the final game to claim the bag of goodies. This was a great idea by Linda Espinoza and we will have some more fun things added to next year's tournament. Winner of the closest predicted score to their actual score was the great Fortune Teller from the East, Zerir Baugh. It doesn't surprise me at all Zerir won this event as he records every game he bowls and has tracked his progress since taking up the game a little more than a year ago. I'm sure he calculated the tournament condition into his prediction and the fact that he was bowling a little before his alarm clock normally goes off. With all the variables calculated and giving himself a few pins room for error, Zerir guessed his 3 game series would be 465 and his actual score was 460. Congratulations to Zerir who won a $20 gift certificate for his efforts. FInishing just out of the money in 5th place was the always dangerous Margie Maura. Margie is very steady on any oil pattern and is consistently near the top of any leaderboard. In 6th place was Duane Bace who was near the top the whole tournament but fell just a few pins short of making the finals.

A special thanks to Bart di Bartolo and Linda Espinoza who helped run the tournament and had up to date scores for everyone to see and kept everything running smooth as silk as they always do with any tournament they are part of. Another special thanks to Jean Parkey who helped with the sign ups and who donated 2 Las Vegas Wrangler tickets that a lucky bowler won. Last but not least, thanks to Sunset Station and Jim Welch for allowing us to have our tournament at his great center. This is one of the nicest bowling centers in the world and I feel very honored to be able to coach and bowl there. I think it's great that our bowlers diversify and travel to other centers periodically which can only help to improve your bowling as the oil patterns will play a little differently wherever you are. It should be noted also that for our tournament, the oil pattern was the Kegal "Bourbon Street" pattern which seemed to be playing very difficult at the onset but did get a little easier as the shot broke down and more games were bowled on it. There seemed to be an abundance of oil as the balls weren't breaking very much and there was also an out of bounds if you got the ball too far to the outside part of the lane. Again, a premium was put on making spares. That is what I try to stress to every bowler I coach. The WHOLE game is about making spares...strikes will come. Be patient grasshoppers.

The most important thing I can say again is thanks to everyone. Thanks so much to everyone who brought food to share with everyone. I feel so priviledged and blessed to be able to work with so many great people and be friends with so many of you also. We may have another tournament at some point during the year as several bowlers have asked me if we could do another one before next February. I believe the tournament format along with changing lanes, etc., will help many of you at some point in your bowling career.

Congratulations again to Kim Molnar as she is the 2011 Super Bowling Champion.

All of the pictures from the tournament can be seen below.
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