At the end of the preliminary rounds, five of the six seeded players remained undefeated. Only Mazin Shooni had suffered a loss to Felipe Razon who’s record was seven win one loss but didn’t make the cut into the finals. There were two other players in the same flight with similar records. Mazin Shooni and Khalil Diab. Razon lost to Diab scoring only 8 points. Shooni, who scored 23 points against Razon, finished first. Diab, who scored 11 points against Shooni, was the second qualifier of this group.

The three times National Champion Carlos Hallon, lost one game against Adrian Viguera and another one against Young Lee. Viguera finished first and Young Lee was the second qualifier of the flight.


Pedro Piedrabuena won all his games. The second place was decided in a match between Billy Maloney and Aaron Steinberg. The final score was twenty-five to twenty three in favor of Steinberg who made the final cut.


Roberto Arana played very good in the preliminaries, taking the lead early in all matches and defeating all of his opponents by a large margin. The second qualifier was Doug Brink, who had a record of four win and three losses. Mr. Tom Rossman had a similar record but Doug won the honor of getting into the finals by a margin of only two points.Tim Moreno from Los Angeles shared the same win and loss record but scored two points less than Rossman loosing his chance to become a finalist.


Michael Kang was also undefeated in the preliminary rounds. Robert Raiford surprised the crowd with an outstanding performance overtaking his opponents and loosing only one game to become a final contender.


Sonny Cho had a few problems but managed to win all his games. Armando Wong took him to the edge scoring twenty-three points. George Vittini scored twenty-two before Sonny scored the twenty fifth point. The second qualifier spot was between Bob Page and Armando Wong. In the last game, Luis Amat, who hadn’t won a game, defeated Page twenty-five to twenty two. If Page had won that game, he would have had a record of five and two and would have been the second qualifier of this flight. Mr. Wong was jumping for joy after Mr. Amat scored the twenty fifth point.

The preliminary rounds concluded according to schedule. The top seeded players finished at the top of their groups. There were six other players including Young Lee, Khalil Diab and four additional players that had never qualified for the final round of the USBA Nationals.

Results of the Preliminary Rounds

Flight 1

Flight 2

Flight 3

Flight 4

Flight 5

Flight 6

Final Rounds

FRIDAY

Bob Jewett, new elected USBA President, along with Charlie Brown, George Aronek and the Tournament Directors Sid Banner and Roberto Arana, reviewed the conditions of the final rounds and established the rules as they have been applied to all USBA National Championships. Brian Morgan, USBA Secretary/Treasurer showed up on Wednesday to provide his support and to oversee the logistics of the event. The tournament will be decided on win and loss record. In case of a tie, the highest average will decide the final standing. For the first and second place, this rule does not apply. In case of equal win and loss record, there will have to be a playoff. The winner of the tiebreaker will become the new USBA National Champion.

All games will be played to thirty-five points. Two rounds will be played on Friday, five more rounds on Saturday and the remaining four rounds will be played on Sunday.

In the first math of the evening, the seeded players won all their matches as they played those players that finished second in the qualifying rounds. The second match was played late into the night and all players started to show the typical signs of a long journey. The seeded players remained undefeated with the exception of Roberto Arana who lost against Khalil Diab. All second place qualifiers had two losses not including Diab who had a record of 1 win and 1 loss.

SATURDAY

All matches started at 10:00A.M. All seeded players won their first match of the day. In the second round, the crowd went crazy when Mazin Shooni had a run of eighteen against Armando Wong, scoring thirty five points in only nine innings. This was the highlight of the day. Shooni had just broken two new National records. These were both held by the late super star Mr. Sang Lee who held the “Best High Run” of seventeen.

As Saturday night comes to end, one of the upset matches was Adrian Viguera vs. Pedro Piedrabuena. Viguera won 35 to 28 putting Piedrabuena, at six wins and one loss record. Now the only two with a no loss record are Mazin Shooni and Sonny Cho. They each have seven wins and zero losses. Nevertheless, Piedrabuena, Shooni and Cho will have to play each other, as there are four more matches to be played on Sunday. According to today results, it appears that only the above three players are in contention for the championship!

SUNDAY

In the first round of the morning, Piedrabuena beats Cho to even up the balance. Now they both have eight wins and one loss. In the second round Shooni looses to Piedrabuena. Now Piedrabuena, Shooni and Cho are all at eight wins and one loss with one game each left to play. In the next round Piedrabuena, Shooni and Cho won their respective matches. Keeping the record even for all of them. If Piedrabuena wins his game and Cho defeats Shooni in the next match, Shooni will be the third place finisher. If Shooni defeats Cho, there will be a tie for the first place and Pedro and Shooni will go into a Playoff to decide the championship. If this happens, Cho, the 2005 National Champion will be the third place finisher.

As expected by the crowd who wanted more action, Shooni won over Piedrabuena and the Championship went into a playoff.

Pedro and Mazin started their warm up shots as the crowd surrounded the whole tournament area. Shooni won the lag and ran two pints. Pedro pulls up to the table and runs ten missing the eleventh point by a hair. The game is now 2 to 10 in only one inning.

Shooni who had been playing good all tournament comes up with two incredible shots to score eight points to even up the score. Pedro misses and Mazin comes back with three more. At the end of just two innings, Mazin is now ahead 13 to 10. Both players keep scoring steady. Pedro runs six and after ten innings Shooni is still ahead twenty-four to twenty three. The crowd is becoming hilarious, as the game progresses the shots become harder to make but both players keep on scoring even when facing close to impossible shots. The score becomes twenty-nine to twenty five and Shooni is still ahead.

Mazin scores three more points and moves ahead thirty-two to twenty six. Pedro scores three more and is now just three points away from Mazin. The Amazing Shooni approaches the table gets a kiss and scores a lucky one getting a favorable position. After scoring the second point, Mazin gets another kiss to win the Championship scoring thirty-five points in just twenty Innings.

After finishing second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. many times, Mazin was finally crowned King of the Hill. Congratulations and good luck in the next World Championship!

Photo Courtesy of Paul Frankel/Professor-Q-Ball's Publication

Results of the Final Rounds

Final Rounds