PB3 Champion

The Parker Bohn III Scholarship Tournament ran its 27th edition at Howell Lanes in Howell, New Jersey, across three days and five age-based divisions: U12 Mixed, U15 Girls, U15 Boys, U18 Girls and U18 Boys. Every division bowls scratch, on a 38-foot Kegel pattern laid for the tournament. Qualifying squads are five games, a bowler may enter more than one squad, and the best block is the one that seeds him. The field then cuts to a bracket of two-game total-pinfall matches, bowled double elimination until a champion is left.

Twenty bowlers entered U15 Boys, between them filling 31 squad entries. Arryn bowled three of them and got better each time: 939, then 1,010, then a 1,079 on squad 4, a 215.8 average and 79 pins over a 200 pace. That led the division and made him the No. 1 seed into the bracket, which he then went through unbeaten to win the title. His middle block, the 1,010, would have qualified 2nd on its own, ahead of every other bowler's best.

On Friday night he also bowled the trios sweeper alongside Abe Monosmith and Kylie Oppedisano. The three of them finished 2nd of 22 teams.

Eight of the twenty bowlers entered more than one squad, and the board rewarded the ones who kept improving. Arryn and Dawson Whitt were the only bowlers to go up on every squad they bowled, Arryn by 140 pins from first to last and Whitt by 87, into 4th. Eric Flink made the biggest single jump, 789 to 977, which took him from outside the cut to 3rd, and Christian Forry's 839 to 897 took the last spot in the field of eight. Cherboni improved by 54 and still missed the cut by 4 pins. Colton Adams peaked in the middle, with the 997 on squad 2 holding up for 2nd after a 932 on squad 4, and Ryan Godfrey was the only one of the eight to finish lower than he started.

Sunday's finals were a double-elimination bracket among the top eight, every match two games on total pinfall. As the No. 1 seed Arryn opened against No. 8 Christian Forry and won 367 to 322, then beat No. 4 Dawson Whitt 361 to 338 and No. 3 Eric Flink 384 to 351 to reach the final unbeaten.

Nicholas Riley came the other way. He had lost his opening match to Whitt by six pins, then won four straight on the elimination side, including a 414 to 410 over Colton Adams and a 428 to 329 over Flink, to earn the last spot opposite Arryn.

Because Arryn had not lost, Riley needed to beat him twice. He did not. Arryn shot 385 to Riley's 380, a five-pin margin, and the 27th Parker Bohn III Scholarship Tournament title in U15 Boys was his.

The final was bowled on lane 3, the two games twenty minutes apart. Arryn opened it badly, a split in the first frame and two more open frames by the fifth, and he was 66 after five. Then he struck out the back half: a spare in the sixth and five strikes in a row to close for a 205.

The second game was the tighter one. He carried a 9 spare, a strike and an 8 spare through three, ran two more strikes, and closed with a spare in the tenth for a 180. 385 against Riley's 380, and the five pins that decided it were there in the first game's finish.

Across all thirteen games of the event he struck on 73 of 144 frames, 50 percent, and averaged 8.98 pins on his first ball. One of the thirteen was clean, and he left 24 open frames.

The spare game is where the weekend was decided. He converted 40 of 58 makeable spares, 69 percent, and 30 of 38 single pins. Six first balls left splits and none of them fell. Had every single pin gone down, the event would have averaged 205.15 rather than 198.15.

Friday night's sweeper is six Baker games, each team carrying at least one male and one female athlete, with handicap at 80 percent of 630. Arryn bowled with Abe Monosmith and Kylie Oppedisano, and the three of them bowled off scratch.

They put up 181, 236, 222, 204, 268 and 192 for 1,303, a 217.17 average and 103 pins over a 200 pace, and finished 2nd of 22 teams. It was the highest scratch total in the field: the winners, M. Keenan, B. Camp and L. MacCormack, bowled 1,285 on the lanes and 1,333 with their 8 pins a game of handicap, so Arryn's trio was 18 pins better scratch and 30 behind on the sheet.

Thank you to coach Michael Sinek for the work that put Arryn in position to win this one, to Parker Bohn III and the Bohn Legacy Foundation for the scholarship tournament, to Howell Lanes for the house, and to everyone who followed along from home.

Three squads, four bracket matches, and a title to show for it.