Surprise finishes are the best.
Deanne Pearce didn’t think she would advance from the Section 4/Will County sectional of Beat the Champions on Sunday at Centennial Lanes in Tinley Park. The administrative assistant from Manhattan not only advanced; she won the women’s side with a 722, including 108 pins of handicap.
Kevin Phillips, who advanced out of the now-closed Brunswick Zone-Homewood, won the men’s side with a 776, including 70 pins of handicap.
‘‘This is the first time I qualified [for sectionals], and I saw other ladies bowling a 279 next to us, so I thought I didn’t have a shot,’’ said Pearce, who advanced from Laraway Lanes.
LaTanza Johnson, a Chicago retiree who finished seventh, rolled the 279 in the second game, high for the women.
‘‘Luck,’’ said Phillips, a retired sheriff from Calumet City. ‘‘Everything was falling today. Normally, the 10-pin is standing up.’’
‘‘It was different; there was nothing down lane to target; it took me time to get used to it,’’ said Ariachizu Kamalu, a Chicago special-education teacher who finished second.
But when he did, he did. He opened the third game with the front eight strikes before leaving the 9-pin on the ninth ball and finishing with a 279.
‘‘It charged on me,’’ he said.
Brandi Branka, a teacher from Momence, charged to close with a 278 to finish second with a scratch 720.
At McKendree University, she was lead bowler and is used to tougher oil patterns, but she had no trouble adjusting to the house shot.
Fifteen women and 13 men advanced to the finals, where a 2015 Ford Fiesta from Local Ford Stores is the top prize for the men’s and women’s champions.
‘‘Forty-five years, I have been bowling this, and this is the first time I even got this far,’’ said Robert Wegley, a retiree from Chicago Heights who finished seventh.
Joyce Crowder, a Chicago teacher who finished fourth, knows everyone reaching the finals receives a prize: She is still using the bowling bag she won in her previous BTC finals. Mary Markham, a retiree from Country Club Hills who finished eighth, once won the $1,000 Pick-A-Pro portion of BTC.
The big money in BTC, cosponsored for 54 years by the Sun-Times and the Chicagoland Bowling Proprietors Association, is the $2,793,600.36 raised for charity from more than 5.7 million entries in the first 53 years.
Other women advancing were Wendy Potter, an insurance sales manager from Hazel Crest; Audrey Phillips, a project manager from Chicago; LaDesha Wilson, a Chicago nurse; Karen Bell-Jackson, a South Holland retiree; Chenell McCullar, a manager for MetLife from Chicago; Kelly Henderson, a Chicago hair stylist; Monica Biliskov, a manager for Cupid Candies from Chicago; Sharon Bailey, a lead coordinator from Orland Park; Donna Johnson, a Mokena woman who works accounting; and Danyeil Simmons-Oats, a U.S. Postal Inspection Service tech from Chicago.
Other men advancing were Ryan Lakota, a crew member/assistant from Shorewood; Shaun Tasker-Lewis, a Comcast technician from Dolton; Raymond Johnson, who advanced from Oak Forest Bowl; Tyler Rapier, a restaurant worker from Kankakee; Matthew Anastasia, a director of finance for Blue Island; Mike Gaffigan, an insurance adjuster from Orland Park; William Walker of Crete; Rodger Kadet, a jeweler from Lemont; Robert Dearth, a Chicago policeman; and Michael Shelton II, a Comcast technician from Hazel Crest.
