SCHWEINFURT, Germany — Army Criminal Investigation Command intern Jerry Marcus of Ansbach collared the all-events trophy in the U.S. Army Europe bowling championships Friday.
But it was hardly an open-and-shut case.
Marcus rolled series of 694 and 668 in Friday’s singles event, the final round of this three-day tournament, to win the 18-game all-events title by one pin over Heidelberg’s Duice Love. Marcus felled 3,370 pins to 3,369 for Love.
“I didn’t know it was that close,” Marcus said after erasing a 71-pin deficit in the final six games.
Love returned with his teammates to Heidelberg in time for Friday night’s league competition and didn’t find out until later that he had lost.
“We made it back about 30 minutes before league bowling,” Love said on Saturday by telephone. “I didn’t know how it came out until somebody called me today. It’s usually not that close.”
Love found consolation in the trophies he won.
“I won the team event and the doubles,” he said, “and we won the Commander’s Cup.”
The Commander’s Cup, largest of the trophies awarded on Friday, goes to the four-bowler teams of each sex with the highest combined 18-game totals. Love’s team, which included all-events third-place finisher Shawn Benitez, Jim Einhorn and Steve Hetu, knocked down 13,933 pins for an average of 193.5.
Not bad for lanes that most bowlers found challenging.
“It was a tough house,” Love said. “The lanes were tough.”
Marcus, a 224-average bowler who averaged nearly 204 for his 18 games here, agreed.
“The lanes were different each day,” he said Friday. “I finally got a line late yesterday and played the same line today.”
The detective work on that line paid off big. Marcus, who rolled 1,083 on Wednesday, improved that total by 142 pins on Thursday and a whopping 279 on Friday.
Women’s all-events champion Kristin Odekirk of Schinnen, who dethroned Kris Butz of Stuttgart, also found the boards a problem.
“The lanes were breaking down fast today,” she said. “You had to keep adjusting.”
Odekirk totaled 3,266 overall to 3,249 for Butz, the singles champion. Butz rolled an 1,153 block Friday to 1,142 for Odekirk. But Odekirk and her Schinnen Ten Pins teammates took the team title; Odekirk and Clarissa Schmoldt won the doubles.
The women’s Commander’s Cup also went to the Ten Pins by an 11,812-11,804 score over Butz’ Stuttgart team.
