The Morris Anderson Memorial Shootout has be a staple of scratch bowling scene in the upper Midwest for over 20 years. Through the years, the tournament has consistently provided an experience and prize fund many bowlers travel hours for.
103 bowlers made the trip to the Magic City for the 8 game qualifying block on Saturday. The folks at North Hill Bowl found a way to still advance 30 bowlers to match play despite the slight dip in entries this season.
All bowlers competed on a custom 42 foot pattern that featured over 32 mls of oil. The pattern produced relatively steady scores throughout the block. Brady Stearns fired off a 300 game in game 3 to claim the $300 bonus and an early lead in the event. Stearns would go on to lead qualifying with an impressive 1899 total (237.37 ave). Rounding out the top 30 was Jon Breckel with a 1600 8-game block. Breckel edged out Wade Scott and Matt Smallin by a single pin for the final spot in match play.
Qualifying Scores:
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Saturday evening featured the usual meal, side pot giveaways, top 30 announcement and the calcutta. NDBowling.com gave away a Storm ball to a random non-casher. Justin Senger won the drawing and recieved a Storm Physix Blackout. Thank you to the folks at Storm for being the official bowling ball sponsor of The High Plains Bowling Network.
On Sunday, the top 30 returned to North Hill Bowl and were separated into 3 groups of 10. Each group would bowl round robin matches with each match winner recieving 30 bonus pins. Top 5 after 10 games would advance to the stepladder finals.
2-time Shootout champion, Brady Stearns, got off to a hot start by shooting 809 his first 3 games. By game 9, Dawson Unrath was able to run down Stearns to claim the overall lead heading into position round. Stearns, however, would get the best of Unrath in the position round to snag the top overall seed on NDBowlTV. Joining Stearns in the stepladder was Unrath, Thomas Wolf, Josh Link and Clayton Reid. Reid jumped from 7th in position round to 5th to claim the last spot in the finals.
NDBowlTV Results:
Reid def. Link, 218-157
Reid def. Wolf, 235-180
Reid def. Unrath, 257-194
Reid def. Stearns, 246-186
Watch the entire NDBowlTV broadcast HERE
Clayton Reid orchestrated an impressive stepladder performance to secure the title and his first NDBowling.com Major Championship. The 23-year old Bismarck/Mandan native looked comfortable the entire show averaging 239 while taking down a few of the more accomplished bowlers from our area. Reid becomes just the 4th bowler from the ND USBC association to have won the Shootout in its 22-year history. (Diederick, Parvey, Smallin) Great bowling, Clayton!
Big thank you to Rory Selk, Jeff Kragh and the entire crew at North Hill Bowl for another well run event. This tournament continues to provide one of the best prize funds around, and I know the bowlers greatly appreciate all the hard work that goes into making this event successful.