Tournament Weekend

The snow finally stopped and was - mostly - plowed away, and we had a trio of tournaments on Saturday.


The Falcon Frenzee was held at Sparta Lanes, and two-time Group II state champions and current #15 Sussex Tech contined their rise, taking the event with a 2987 behind 600s by Joey Steele, Matt Grey and Pat Danielson.  Jacob Lucibello's 698 helped Northern Highlands to a surprising second-place finish with a 2795 set, and #16 Morris Knolls finished 3rd at 2771.

The rest of the field: 4. Wallkill Valley, 2742; 5. Union, 2675; 6. Hopatcong, 2658; 7. St. Peter's Prep, 2612; 8. Montville, 2608; 9. Morris Hills, 2608; 10. Morris Tech, 2472; 11. Jefferson, 2419; 12. Lenape Valley, 2043 and 13. High Point, 1870.

Matthew Marletta of Morris Tech continued his excellent senior season with a tournament-best 726 set.  The rest of the individual boys' top 5 included Lucibello, Nick Thies of Jefferson (693), Jared Ammugauan of St. Peter's (645) and Wallkill Valley's Hunter Horn (639).

Rhianna Smith of Hopatcong was brilliant in yet another tournament firing a 711 series.  Other top sets for the girls included Emma This of Jefferson and Kiara Powell of Union, both shooting 600 exactly.


The FDU-hosted New Year's Team Challenge put out a slightly-harder-than-house shot, depressing scores just a tiny bit, but nowhere near as hard as last year's event.  A lot of talented bowlers struggled, but quite a few came through with solid scores as well.

Greg Tartaglia of northjersey.com has a nice write up right here, and Vince has a recap here.

Eric McKenna of North Arlington fired an event-best 710, while Krista Eskow of Fair Lawn (643) and Holy Angels' Amelia Brunda (631) had the girls' only 600s.

A couple of takeaways beyond the championship runs of West Milford and Warren Hills:  On the boys side, Wayne Hills is absolutely for real, carding a huge 3033 in qualifying.  North Bergen and North Arlington will be dangerous tournament teams.  Coupled with a 3000 set earlier in the week, Howell is trending up.

For the girls, Mahwah's tenacity in the final is the biggest story, but Ramsey's strong 2431 probably marks them as the favorite to win a State Group I title this year.


The Brick Tournament also took place on Saturday, and the scores were, to put it mildly, amazing.

The final results included a series of six Baker games (with one dropped), but just looking at the qualifying 3-game sets... oh, my. Brick Memorial (3286), Toms River South (3224) and Matawan (!) (3201) all lit it up to be in the top 3 (Brick Memorial held on through the Baker rounds to win the title), but were followed closely by TEN other teams that broke 2900:  Edison, Brick Township, Woodbridge, South Brunswick, Lacey (all over 3000), South Plainfield, Jackson Liberty, St. Rose, Southern, and Toms River East.  Now, that's a loaded field to be sure, but still...  Unfortunately, I don't have full individual results yet, so I can't credit the outstanding individual performances that must have happened beyond the top 3: Andrew Varela of Brick Memorial (745), David MacGillivray of Barnegat (733) and Wyatt Buchany of Edison (300/730).

The girls' side was just a crazy, with Toms River North firing a red-hot season-best 3111 to take the event by over 200 pins (including Baker).  Brick Memorial (2933) and Lacey (2827) were excellent as well, with Brick Township, Toms River South and Manchester all cracking 2600, too.  Top girls sets were Kamerin Peters (TRN) with 724, Brick Memorial's Amanda Shelters at 697, and Autumn Laird of Lacey at 671.  I am 100% sure there were more 600s than that.


With the delay in getting standing sheet data from before the break, I'm positive I've missed a few honor scores along the way and I'll try to start fresh with this week's action.  But I did want to mention that the Brick Memorial girls managed 3 600s in a match, by Amanda Shelters (648), Rachel Katz (627) and Veronica Lewis (606).  And preseason all-state pick Joey Ocello made his post-transfer-sitout debut for Neptune count in a big way, firing a 300 game and a 785 set, second best in the state for the season.