Amherst left-hander John Price shot 300 during Game 1 of Saturday’s College Bowl Tournaments doubles event at Eastbury Bowling Center.
But it came with a price.
“I’m going to have to go home and ice down. It was just crazy,” said Price after he and partner Josh Truman topped Joe Hostetler and Rob Sample 424-371 to claim the victory.
“My right calf just cramped up. It came out of nowhere. Here I hit 300 the first game and I could barely even walk going to the next pair. It was a battle all day.”
Price, 44 and Truman, a 38-year-old LaGrange right-hander, had a difficult battle just getting to the four-team championship round.
Despite shooting 537 in Game 1, the pair shot just 398 in Game 3 to head into the final qualifying game with just a four-pin advantage.
“After that first monster game we kind of found a soft spot there,” said Truman, who has bowled in team and doubles with Price for the past few years.
The pair combined for 470 that final game to earn the No. 3 seed by just four pins and reach the championship round by just eight pins overall.
“One thing we wanted to do was stay out of the four hole so we didn’t have to bowl (Hostetler and Sample) early,” said Price, who won the group’s last singles event at AMF Hall of Fame.
Instead, they faced No. 2 seed J.D. Jones and Scott Vandegrift in the semifinals in a match that went down to the 10th frame with Price and Truman gaining a 470-468 win. Price had 236 in that match; Truman shot 234.
The Stark County pair of Jones and Vandegrift had a chance to steal the win with scores of 257 and 211, respectively, but Vandegrift’s shot in the 10th frame came up heavy leaving a 3-6-10 spare. “Not enough speed,” Vandegrift said.
The title match came down to one result — carry. Truman, among the four competitors, was the only bowler to find some semblance of it.
After blistering the field by 104 pins en route to the No. 1 seed, Sample and Hostetler rolled during the semifinals 530-395 over the Alliance duo of Kevin Schott and Richard Elliott.
But on the title pair, a pair they never hit during qualifying (neither did Truman and Price), neither could find the proper pocket angle. The pair combined for only eight strikes in the title match.
“I really don’t know what it was. I left five 10-pins from all different angles,” said Sample, a 50-year-old Green right-hander, who missed two 10-pin spares.
Hostetler, a 32-year-old Green right-hander who won a previous College Bowl doubles event with Dylan Rinella this season, had 300 in Game 1 and shot 837 for the first three games en route to a 1,080 series. But the title pair was a mystery.
“I just seemed to be tighter down the lane. It was really funny,” said Hostetler, who chopped a 2-5-7 spare in the sixth frame. “If you played further right, I got OK ball reaction but not great. I kept trying to go around it, but I just couldn’t get through the puddle.”
Meanwhile, Price and Truman each started with three strikes. But while Truman was able to put together another three-strike string later, Price ran into the same problems as his opponents, leaving five 7-pins from the fourth frame on and missing one.
“I really don’t know what it was,” said Truman about his ability to carry while the others could not. “They were all hitting the pocket, but it just wasn’t carrying.”
While Hostetler (194) and Sample (177) finished with just 371, Truman shot 222 to team with Price’s 202 to secure the win.
What kind of day was it overall for the pair, who earned $700 with the win?
“I guess we’re standing here talking to you so it went well,” Truman said.
As always, carry was the name of the game.
NOTES: The next College Bowl Tournaments event is singles at 10 a.m. Jan. 15 at AMF Hall of Fame. … The tourney drew 16 teams, with the cut being 1,842. Elliott and Schott, who thought they had missed it after coming up two points short of Price and Truman —both teams were on the same pair — earned the final spot by just four pins over Dennis Welty and Cecil Forrester. … Second place paid $350 while the two semifinal losing teams each received $240. … In addition to Hostetler and Price, senior player John Shreve also shot 300 in Game 3. Shreve and his partner Bob Eckenrode finished sixth. … In addition to his 300, Hostetler had games of 278 and 259 for his 837.