BATON ROUGE - I tend to be a glass more than half-full type of guy.

So for the recently concluded PBA SW Dudley DeBosier Open, I left All Star Lanes in Baton Rouge with a good feeling.

First of all, the competition and the quality of play was pretty good. The 47-foot PBA Dragon pattern wasn’t as big a problem as it looked on the lane graphic and scores were good in the 13-game qualifying. But while watching a few 300 and 290 games being shot, there were also the 155 and 143 games shot by bowlers in the final game of qualifying that knocked them out of a chance to get to the final eight and the title round robin.

To be honest, I thought the field number of 88 bowlers was quite acceptable for the $25,000 purse tournament. More than acceptable when the national PBA Tour turned an event that was usually just an 8-player Tour Finals into the repackaged Norm Duke Open which a field of around 140.

That’s why the appearance of 19-time regional winner and two-time national PBA winner Shawn Maldonado was extremely impressive. He was eliminated on the first cut in the Duke earlier in the week then found his way to Baton Rouge from the Philadelphia area to bowl our event.

More amazingly, Mason Edmondson and Maldonado were on the same pair of lanes the entire 13-games of qualifying as they went 1-2 in the standings. That meant they had to bowl the first game of the round-round match play. Edmondson looked completely different and he not only no longer had the lead, he was out of the top two after the first match.

So it was Zachary Leshikar who moved to second and his next match was against Maldonado and it was an outstanding match to watch as both players tie at 279, each with three strikes in the 10th.

But bowling is bowling and not everything is good and for whatever reason, the Houston star became mortal in the seventh game with three splits and a missed 10 pin. The result was a 146 for Maldonado and his chances to win were virtually gone.

How does something like that happen you might ask for a professional bowler to suddenly lose the lane, his ball reaction, etc. etc. That’s why bowling is a little more difficult than you might think. Things don’t come easy every time we step on the lanes.

In the final analysis, the PBA Regional coming to Louisiana for the first time in many, many years was a success for the PBA and All Star Lanes. Hopefully this is a relationship that can continue in the future.

Ava’s An All-American.

Word is out that state girls high school champion and UAB bound bowlers Ava Doucet of St. Joseph’s Academy will be named a Dexter High School All-American when the team is officially announced at Junior Gold in a couple of weeks.

There are a lot of All-American teams in a lot of sports, but this is the cream of the crop team in our sport and a huge honor for this lady who came into her own in her senior season.

She becomes the fourth Dexter All-American from Louisiana joining Rivers Jones of Redemptorist in 2010, Kay Rawls of Central in 2011 and Max Oertling of Brother Martin in 2016. Lenny Vangilder of Crescent City Sports with the research assist on that.

Pro-Am Results:

Prior to the start of the PBA regional, there was a pro-am event in which bowlers participated with different pros.

In the adult division, Joseph Layton was the easy winner with a 1,693 total for $600 with Chad McCain (1,578) in second earning $350. The rest of the top five were Jason Thompson (1,577, $250), Rob Livingston (1,555-$125) and Lakeya Smith Anthony (1,549-$75).

The senior division was won by Livingston (1,555) for the $500 top prize in that division with Sherry Palmer second for $300 with 1,550. The rest of the cashers were Kip LeBlanc, Angela Williams, David Juneau and Jerry Deslatte.

The youth division winners earned scholarship money that went into their accounts for future use. Max Dawson took top honors for $400 with 1,648, followed by Jackson Dukes (1,623-$250) and Sammy Livingston (1,573-$15). Noah Fontenot and Liam Guitreau finished out those cashers.

Just part of a good weekend and event at All-Star.

State and Bowlers Mart tournament results next Monday. Until then, good luck and good bowling.