Fort takes 15th in nation at bowling tournament

Christopher Fort from Peachtree City participated in the Teen Masters High School Bowling Tournament in Cleveland, Ohio this week, finishing 15th overall after bowling 34 games.

The tournament consists of the best high school bowlers across the country who are competing for a $64,000 first place scholarship.

The tournament began on Monday with the group of 104 bowlers competing on the challenging “long” oil pattern with six games. Day one was completed with Christopher finishing in 24th place. Day two brought about six more games on the more difficult “short” oil pattern with the top 34 bowlers moving on to round three. Christopher fell to 28th place but made the cut to round 3.

On Wednesday morning the top 34 bowlers competed with six additional games on the mixed patterns which were made up of the long oil pattern on the left lanes and the short oil pattern on the right. This certainly brought about the true test of the bowlers’ skill as they had to make adjustments on every frame due to the changing lane conditions. Only the top 16 bowlers would now move on to the “match play” portion of the tournament.  Christopher brought his “A” game Wednesday and rolled the second best six game total catapulting him to 14th place overall.

On Wednesday night the tournament continued with the first half of match play. The 16 bowlers will roll one game each against the other 15 bowlers who have made it to this round. Pin totals are rolled over from the entire tournament and each match play win provides a 30 pin bonus. The second round of match play was conducted at 2 p.m. on Thursday with the top 4 remaining bowlers going to the championship matches.