He was recently voted into the New England Bowlers Association Hall of Fame. He has a perfect 900 series. He averaged like 260 for an entire summer league. What else was there left to check off? An LIUSBC Masters of course.
Congratulations to Joe Novara for winning this weekend's LIUSBC 2023 Masters Tournament from Herrill Lanes. In a combined field of 105 entries across 2 squads where re-entries were permitted, Novara did....what Novara does.
Novara actually started slowly, joining the first squad yesterday afternoon and shooting 1115 for the 6 game set, which wasn't close to the cut score. Joey promptly joined the second squad and fired off games of 253, 162, 227, 253, 223 and 190 for a +108, good enough to qualify for the cashers round today.
In the 5-game cashers round this morning in which scores carried over from round 1, Joey grinded out games of 209, 224, 215, 180 and 157 to qualify as the 8 seed headed into the final 16 double elimination bracket. And that's when he finally caught his groove.
In the first round, Novara defeated Jeffrey Juarez 210-193. In the 2nd round he met long time St. John's Bowling Coach Bill "Wacky" Delawski and triumphed 208-159. In round 3 he took down Justin Warhol 206-200. That set up a gargantuan matchup in the semis against Alex Cavagnaro, but again Novara was up for the challenge, bettering Alex 257-203.
From that point, Joey had to wait a bit as, because of the format, he was the only remaining bowler without a loss. Cavagnaro, after losing to Novara in the semis, went into the losers bracket, but defeated Gary Haines 226-183 to set up a rematch against these two mesmerizing talents. However, this time around, Cavagnaro would need to best Joey twice in order to win the title. Joey, however, would not be denied, throwing the back 8 strikes en route to a 268-234 win and his first ever LIUSBC Masters Title.
A shout to Joe Finck, Tony Martinez, Diana Kurass Walter, Doreen Walter, Jayu Kulkarni and the staff of Herrill Lanes for putting on a fantastic tournament. Also a shout to Greg Schultz for streaming the title match.
Watch the title match video below:
