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The Striketown Bowl team arrived at Sunset Lanes in Pekin on Monday facing a 19-point deficit to league leader Plaza Lanes in the Bill Mastronardi Masters League. At the end of the night, Striketown was second to none.

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Led by captain Tommy Barnwell, the Striketown team surged to a dominant 42–8 decision in the position round match against Plaza Lanes to claim the second third league title and earn a berth in the Tournament of Champions.

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Striketown took control early, jumping out to an 8–4 lead in the opening game and surrendering just four more points the rest of the night as the pressure steadily shifted to Plaza.

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Barnwell set the tone with a 764 series, sweeping Plaza anchor Bob Baker 8–0. Tony Wysinger followed with a 686 to take six of eight points from Jason Jones of Peoria, while Luke Morris added a key 700 series and split his matchup with Zach Lantz. Dan Shinall closed out the night with a 658, beating Plaza captain Chris Feger 6–2.

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“I knew I needed to come out and set the tone like I did last week,” said Barnwell.

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After his team had lost a match 40-10 two weeks ago, Barnwell’s team had fallen to fourth place. But he rolled an 842 set at Potter’s Alley in Morton in a 42-8 win to move into second place. The team bowled games of 952, 1,048 and 995 for a 2,995 series that night – the highest four-man team score in the nation so far this season.

That effort set the team up to be in contention for the league title on the final night of the second third of the season.

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“Bob’s been struggling, so I thought we might have a chance,” said Barnwell, who has raised his average almost four pins to 231.76 in the past two weeks. “The first game was close — 8–4 as a team — but after that, Coach and Luke settled in and we pulled away. And Dan caught a few breaks that Feger probably wasn’t too happy about.”

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Plaza Lanes actually fell to third in the standings, behind T&D Windshield.

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The team of Steve Taylor (755), Cory Andes (715), Josh Barnwell (695), and Mike Gilbert (623) entered the night in fourth place. But T&D beat Linn Lanes 42-8 to vault into second.

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The late season surge validated Barnwell’s confidence in his roster from the start.

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“I thought I had a great team,” Barnwell said. “Coach is someone I look up to, and I was so excited to finally get to bowl with him. Dan is, in my opinion, the most underrated bowler in the league. Then to get Luke in the third round — a guy who’s been a captain before — I thought I had the team to beat.”

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For Wysinger, the night carried deeper meaning than standings and points. He spent several seasons bowling below his standard while waiting for a kidney transplant – a process that took more than eight and a half years before he finally received one in March of 2024.

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“For about three years, I averaged around 211 to 215, so I didn’t bowl very well,” said Wysinger, the longtime men's basketball coach at Illinois Central College. “Let me put it this way: I was on the right side of the page on the Masters average list.”

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After taking last season off to focus on recovery, Wysinger said this year finally feels like a return to form.

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“Everything feels much better,” he said. “I wanted to bowl last year, but I took a year off. A few friends started practicing with me, and I finally got it back.”

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He is currently in seventh on the average list at 224.78 – safely on the left side of the league average list.

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During position round, Wysinger stayed focused on execution rather than the math.

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“I knew something was on the line, but I wasn’t going to ask what it was until we were done,” he said. “I knew we were bowling for the second third, but I didn’t know how many points we needed. I usually look at that when I’m in coach mode, but this time I just bowled and found out after the last frame of the last game.”

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Wysinger credited Barnwell’s leadership and the team’s consistency down the stretch.

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“Tommy kept saying, ‘We’re right there. “We can do this,’” Wysinger said. “And we did. Plaza got some bad breaks, but we hit the pocket consistently.”

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Sunset record goes down – twice

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​While those two teams were bowling for the league title, a couple of bowlers were having career nights.

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Tony DeVita finished with a career-high 867 series on games of 289, 300 and 278. That improved his league-leading average to 239.17 for 63 games.

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Bill Mahr, bowling on the pair next to DeVita, upped his average to 229.61 (fifth on the average list) after rolling an 858 set on games of 268, 300 and 290.

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Both series bettered the former house record for Sunset Lanes, which had stood for almost 24 years.

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In 2002, Greg Rendleman put together games of 300, 290, and 267 to set the standard with an 857 series.

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“I had no idea,” Maher said. “But I held the record for five minutes!”

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Maher struck on 32 of his 36 shots on the night. He struck on 23 of his final 24 shots of the night, leaving a pocket 7-pin in the first frame of the 290.

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“I sent a couple of messengers across the deck, but most of the strikes were 10-back,” he said.

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Maher used a Blu Nu Hammer ball, drilled by Danielle Johnson-vanderMeer.

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“I want to give a shout out to Danni and Perfect Angle for drilling it for me,” he said.

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It was Maher’s career high league series.

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“But I have an 878 in practice when I was in college working with Dave Bartlett at Pheasant Lanes,” he said.

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DeVita, who has been on a tear all season, said he didn’t know what the previous house record was at Sunset or who owned it.

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“A few of us talked about it in the bar, but nobody knew for sure,” he said. “Joe Robards (the league president) messaged me and told me that I had broken it.”

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DeVita struck on all but three of his deliveries, leaving a 4-pin on the 11th ball of his 289, a swishing 7-pin in the ninth frame and a 10-pin on his fill ball of the 278.

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His previous high series was an 856.

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“I knew I was having a huge series, but I didn’t know it was 860 until Kyle Andes told me after I finished the last game,” DeVita said. “I was just having a normal conversation and going through the motions.”

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His ball of choice was the Phaze AI, and he thanked Kenny Shockency for the equipment on a Facebook post.

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The league will start its third round of play on Monday at Linn Lanes in Canton. 

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Another family with three generations of 300 bowlers

 

​​It turns out there is a fourth area family that has had three generations of bowlers with 300 games.

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The McBride family even has a different “branch” than the others.

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Gary McBride, a Hall of Fame bowler, is the patriarch of the family with three perfect games in his career. When McBride was bowling in his prime, two of the top bowlers in the area were always “The Two Garys” – Smith (also a Hall of Famer) and McBride.

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His son Mike has bowled more than 100 perfect games and about 50 800 series, while his daughter Kelly McBride Ford has bowled one trey and two 800 series. That means that the two siblings are among the national leaders in 300 games by brother(s) and sister(s). The current leaders listed on the bowl.com website are John (62) and Jodi Musto (46) of Schenectady, N.Y., with 108, followed by Billy Harris (65) and Tammy Schmidtke (8) of Kenosha, Wisconsin, with 73.

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Gary, Mike, and Kelly also could be the career leaders for 300s by a father, daughter, and son(s). Currently, Bill Harris (3), Billy Harris (65) and Schmidtke (8) are listed as the leaders with 76.

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Jeffrey McBride, Mike’s son and Gary’s grandson, became the family’s third generation 300 bowler when he rolled his first trey in 2021. He added No. 2 in 2024.

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To give the family an adjacent branch on the list of accomplishments, Gary McBride also has a hole-in-one on the golf course.

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​Newest Pekin honorees

 

George Brunsman and Mitchell T. Jobe have been elected into the Greater Pekin Bowling Association’s Hall of Fame.

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Brunsman, the current president of the Peoria River City USBC Bowling Association, has been bowling in the Peoria/Pekin area for more than 55 years.

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He has served as a youth coach, league officer, and board member in Peoria.

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On the lanes, he won three city titles in Pekin, two regular and three senior titles in Peoria, and a senior division title in Pekin.

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Brunsman, 70, won several tournament and league titles, including a Masters title, had a high average of 228, rolled 15 perfect games and two 800 series.

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He was inducted into the Peoria association’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

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Jobe died in 2012 shortly after turning 50 after a four-year bout with cancer.  

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His bowling achievements include six 300 games and two 800 series.

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The two men will be induced during the Pekin association’s awards dinner on Saturday, March 28 at 2 p.m. at the Creve Coeur VFW. Dinner tickets are $20.

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