A solitary stubborn pin in the 10th frame of Michael Martins’s first game Friday extinguished his bid at a 300, so three hours later the Roselle Park bowler instead seized a different prize: the Union County Individual Tournament title.
Martins defeated Westfield’s Perry Cuccaro, 217–198, to win the championship. Union’s Chris Thomas placed third, Westfield’s Gabe Dayon finished fourth and Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s Matt Reynolds ended in fifth.
Cuccaro, the two-time defending champion, entered the stepladder with the top seed. Martins was seeded second. Thomas earned the third seed, Reynolds the fourth and Dayon the fifth.
Two other Westfield bowlers, Ben Hsu and Micah Berger, competed, making Westfield the largest delegation on Friday. Hsu and Berger finished 17th and 18th.
In the stepladder, the No. 5 seed begins by playing the No. 4 seed. The winner plays the No. 3 seed, and then the winner of that plays the No. 2 seed, and then the winner of that plays the No. 1 seed for the title.
The format forces the No. 2-4 seeds to climb the rungs as the top seed waits for his final opponent to emerge. But the stepladder format—intended, of course, to favor the top seed—may have worked against Cuccaro on Friday. The momentum Cuccaro had generated with a monstrous 799 series dissipated during the long layoff before the championship match.
“I kind of expected it,” Cuccaro said, “because when I got seeded first I had to sit out for so long, and I didn’t have the momentum I had last year (as the No. 4 seed).”
Cuccaro stayed warm on designated practice lanes while the lower seeds tussled, but the practice couldn’t replicate the real-game atmosphere.
“It’s different because those are not the lanes he’s going to be bowling on, and there’s no pressure there,” said Westfield head coach Ralph Corey, who was satisfied with his bowlers’ performances but grimaced slightly when asked about the layoff Cuccaro endured. “So when you’re competing, you stay focused, get a rhythm going. [Being the No. 1 seed] was new for him this year.”
That is not to diminish Martins’s achievement. The Roselle Park sophomore, a friend of Cuccaro’s (they bowl together on Saturdays and have bowled tournaments together in the past), blazed through the first eight frames before relenting once it became clear that he had built an unassailable position.
Martins reached the final after leaping past Union’s Thomas, 257–224.
Thomas, a junior, this year made his third appearance in the stepladder, after placing fifth as a freshman and fourth as a sophomore. He entered Friday four spots out of the top five but powered his way into the stepladder with a 716 series.
“I knew I had to come in and bowl a 700 series,” he said, “so I took that into consideration and went out and bowled.”
The scene at Jersey Lanes around 6 p.m. on Thursday perhaps augured Thomas’s strong performance. After Westfield eliminated Union in the Baker quarterfinals, Thomas stuck around to practice. More than an hour later, when the victorious Blue Devils funneled out to celebrate their county title, Thomas was still there. Phalanxes of pins stood silent in their dark alcoves in a mostly deserted Jersey Lanes. But Thomas hurled shot after shot, practicing, he said Friday, on “getting around the ball, getting the ball up the lane.”
Perhaps aided by that extra practice, Thomas beat Dayon, 228–206.
Dayon said it was “a good feeling” to be one of the top bowlers in the county. He bowled an assertive game to beat SPF’s Reynolds, 262–214, in the first round of the stepladder. But Corey said the vagaries of bowling perhaps obstructed Dayon against Thomas.
“Sometimes it just comes down to lucky breaks,” Corey said. “A pin not dropping can quickly change the course of the game.”
Dayon suffered some nervous moments waiting to see if he had qualified for the stepladder. He had entered Friday in third place, but faltered in his final game, setting up a fraught wait as scores were tabulated and parents did frantic mental math. After it all, he eked into the final five by 7 pins.
Dayon perhaps would have been more secure in advancing had Reynolds not jumped into the fray with a scintillating display. Three games and 739 pins after entering Friday in 14th place, Reynolds had ascended 10 spots and crashed the stepladder party.
“I came in today with little-to-no expectation,” he said. “I just told myself to throw good shots, quality shots. I wasn’t expecting to even be in stepladders.” Reynolds said his confidence mounted as the series progressed, and that confidence propelled him. He entered the stepladders telling himself just to have fun.
“Once you make the stepladders, it’s just a clean sheet again,” Dayon said. “It’s just one game at a time.”
The unique format creates an inimitable spectacle.
Things are quiet down there at the end of the lanes, quiet but for a murmur. If not for the soft pulse of the discordant music and the distant crashes from recreational bowlers, it would be nearly silent.
Silent, that is, until the ball slams 10 pins into the ground. Then the motley cluster behind the lanes grows animated.
There was a lot of that on Friday, a lot of ooohs and a lot of clapping, a lot of appreciation for the gifted array of Union County bowlers whose brilliance was on full display Friday for those who were there to see it.
