The North Pointe Junior Gold Championships is an annual national tournament for the top male and female youth bowlers in the United States. The tournament awards $250,000 in scholarships and youth bowlers also have the opportunity to earn a spot on Junior Team USA.
Tyler Sheehy, bowling out of the vaunted Sun Prairie Youth bowling program, made the match play portion of the U15 (under 15) Boys division at the 2013 North Pointe Junior Gold Championships. The youth program at Sun Prairie is operated primarily by MBA Hall of Famer John Breunig and MWBA Hall of Famer Cher Breunig, and includes an excellent staff of dedicated volunteer coaches. Tyler earned his way to Junior Gold via a qualifier at Prairie Lanes.
Junior Gold is contested on a variety of World Tenpin Bowling Association lane conditions – a tremendous challenge of skill for even the top adult bowlers in the world.
Sheehy had a slow start to the event, rolling a modest 884 in his first block of five games. Still, the total was good for 71st place among 314 bowlers. He rocketed up to 23rd place after ten games with a 1071 set. His third block of 1004 moved him up to 13th place. At this point, the field was cut to the top 45 bowlers.
In the Advancers Round, Sheehy posted another solid 1005 set and moved up one spot to 12th. The field was cut to the top 32 for the Final Advancers Round.
With a berth in final 16 double-elimination match-play segment on the line, Sheehy bowled the highest block score of all 32 remaining bowlers, a 1024. His total pinfall for the tournament was 4988 (199.52 average) for 25 games on the demanding conditions.
In match play, the 10 seed Sheehy fell to seventh seed Charlie Reid, 433-363 and moved to the elimination bracket to face the 15 seed Ben Hardin.
Sheehy shot 387 to Hardin’s 342 and advanced to meet the eighth seed Bryan Bourget. In the two game total pin match, Sheehy was down by ten pins after one game, 214-204. In the last game, Sheehy needed to strike out to force Bourget to mark. He buried the first two, but pulled the final shot for a seven count and a 186; a 390 total. Bourget struck on his first ball in the tenth to eliminate Sheehy 424-390.
Congratulations to Tyler Sheehy on a spectacular run in the Junior Gold event and we look forward to seeing him successfully competing in future events.