BATON ROUGE - Something new for high school bowling debuted this past Saturday at All Star Lanes in Baton Rouge with a format that is exactly what the sport needs and a showcase for those that bowled the best in their respective districts during the year.

The high school coaches association conducted an event that featured the all-district teams from across most of the state from this past bowling season. Six of the seven regions in the state were represented and 25-of-the-29 districts were represented which for a first-year event in May is a smashing success. That led to 23 boys/open teams competing and 10 girls’ teams.

The format is something I would love to see carry over in some form to the playoffs with the teams bowling two traditional five-player games. Then they would bowl 10 baker games for a total team score off of 20 games. The top four made the stepladder championship round.

Individual awards were given out based on the two traditional games total led for the boys by Landen Sullivan of Alexandria Senior High with a 481, followed by Lucky Bella (South Terrebonne) 471, Sam Vollenweider (Brother Martin) 468, Anthony Linker (Archbishop Rummel) 461 and Grant Gehring (Jesuit) 458.

The girls’ side was extremely tight up top with Olivia Bares of Archbishop Chapelle the best at 441, two pins ahead of Sydney Lee of Dutchtown at 439. Elizabeth Hamilton was third from Chapelle at 435. Gracie Dawson of Denham Springs finished fourth at 414 with Addison Tran (Patrick Taylor) 382.

The District 1 Baton Rouge regional team, had the top qualifier score at 3,789, with the District 1 NOLA team second at 3,720. Baton Rouge teams were third (District 2, 1st team) at 3,514 and the second team from the same district was fourth at 3,368.

In the best of five stepladder matches, the BR District 2 first team was a 3-0 winner over the BR District 2 second team in the opening match with the New Orleans team winning a 3-0 decision in the semifinal which included a narrow 201-200 win for NOLA in the opening match.

In the championship match, Baton Rouge District 1 rallied from a game down twice but it was NOLA taking the fifth and final game, 203-194, to win 3-2.

In the boys/coed bracket qualifying, the 5A District 1 NOLA team dominated qualifying at 4,259 with the 4A District 2 team from NOLA second at 4,110. The 5A District 2 team from Baton Rouge was third at 3,957 and the Alexandria Region team at 3,925 was the final stepladder qualifier.

In the stepladder finals, the Baton Rouge 5A No. 2 team won 3-0 over Alexandria and then edged out NOLO 4A No. 2, 3 games to 2, with a 208 game in the finale. That set the stage for the 5A teams from NOLA and Baton Rouge to meet for the gold medal and after Baton Rouge won the first two games, NOLA came back to go 219-207-249 to win the match, 3-2.

A great event and one that was good enough to earn a continued spot on the calendar. Congrats to Phil Godley and the All Star staff for putting this thing together. It was like bowling’s all-star event and it worked very well.

What’s Happening Downtown?

Again the scoring on the doubles and singles pattern is absolutely amazing and more things happened in the last few days that again makes me wonder if your reward for surviving the team pattern at the USBC Open at the Raising Canes River Center is you get to try to get all you can scoring wise in the doubles and singles.

Saturday morning, two-time Eagle winner 62-year-old Marc McDowell of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, put together scores of 299, 196 and 300 to take the lead in Regular Singles by two pins with 795.

The lead in Regular Singles now has changed hands three times this past week at the River Center. Chris Karlin of Huntington, Indiana, took over the top spot Wednesday with 789 and was passed Friday by Richie Benninghoff of South Bend, Indiana, with 793.

McDowell, a five-time Professional Bowlers Association Tour champion, recorded his first two wins at the Open Championships in 2005 and 2011. 

The performance in 2005 also took place at the River Center in Baton Rouge, as McDowell joined USBC Hall of Famers Jeff Richgels and Mike Shady, Gail Myers Jr. and Steve Richter to win Team All-Events with 9,698.

Pretty amazing.

Thanks for checking in and until next Monday, good luck and good bowling.

                                                        Kent Lowe