Nevada Champion

SYC Nevada is a Storm Youth Championships stop at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno, bowled as three five-game blocks (Short, Medium and Long), each on its own pattern, with all fifteen games combined into a single total and no match play. Forty-seven bowlers entered U15 Boys. The Short and Medium blocks ran Saturday, the Long block Sunday morning.

Arryn won the division with 3,410 pins, a 227.3 average and +410 against a 200 pace, finishing 76 pins clear of Nehemiah Keefer and 199 clear of Jon Abigania in 3rd. The division as a whole averaged 173.0 across the fifteen games; Arryn carried 54.3 pins a game more than that. It is his first SYC title. His best previous finish on the tour was 2nd, at Florida and at Super Slam Wisconsin.

The standings after every game tell the weekend better than the block totals do. Arryn opened with a 187 while Keefer threw a 264, and after one game he sat 15th, 77 pins back. By the end of the Short block he had climbed to 2nd, still 74 behind.

The Medium block swung it. Keefer bowled 164 and 166 in games eight and nine while Arryn put up 257 and 205, and a 37-pin deficit became a 117-pin lead in three games. Over the whole Medium block Arryn outscored Keefer by 144, 1,106 to 962. His 149 in game ten gave back 47 of it, and he slept on a 70-pin lead.

Sunday is where it was closest. Keefer came out 258 and 290, the highest game in the division all weekend, against Arryn's 211 and 279, and after twelve games the lead was down to 12 pins. Game fourteen decided it: Arryn threw a 257, Keefer a 200, and the lead went back to 75. Keefer's 1,183 Long block was six pins short of Arryn's 1,189, and the final margin was 76.

The frame-by-frame numbers for the fifteen games show where the pins came from. He struck on 106 of 169 frames, 62 percent, and averaged 9.43 pins on his first ball. Seven of the fifteen games were clean, and the whole event carried 15 open frames.

The spare game held up. He converted 42 of 48 makeable spares, 87.5 percent, including 38 of 41 single pins, and 1 of 10 splits. His best three games in a row were 279, 228 and 257 on Sunday, a 764.

Arryn had bowled eleven SYC stops before this one and finished 2nd twice. The tour had been the one place a title kept getting away, even as he won three PBA Jr. regionals, the PBA Jr. World Championship and the Junior Gold U14 Boys national title.

The shape of this one is the part worth recording. He came from 15th after the first game, took the lead in the Medium block, and then had it cut to 12 pins on Sunday morning by a 290, and answered with a 257 when the title was on the line. The bowler he held off was Nehemiah Keefer, whom he had also beaten in the televised semifinal at Junior Gold in July.