O'Neill, Jones and Barnes Win In Record Fashion

From BJI e-newsletter:
Competing as a Team USA member for the first time, Bill O’Neill put on a record-breaking performance in winning the singles gold medal Tuesday at the 2009 Pan American Bowling Confederation Championships in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

O’Neill totaled 1475 for six games (an average of nearly 246) to win the opening event at Carolina Bowling Center. He had games of 229, 204, 238, 279, 246 and 279 on the day’s opening squad and broke the previous record of 1428, set in 2001 by Canada’s Danyck Briere.

A DAY AFTER Team USA’s O’Neill broke the singles record, his teammates Chris Barnes and Tommy Jones smashed the doubles record at the 2009 Pan American Bowling Confederation Championships in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Barnes and Jones combined to shoot 2788 on the first of three squads Wednesday morning, and the score held up throughout the day to bring the pair the title at Carolina Bowling Center.

Jones led the duo with 1404 for six games, an average of 234, while Barnes totaled 1384, an average of 230.67. Their total broke the previous record of 2709, set by Mexico’s Victor Mar and Vicente Mendez in 1989.

“We are really pleased with how we performed, especially since the lanes played completely different today than they did in the practice session a couple days ago,” Barnes said. “We came in with a strategy and had to change that quite a bit. We could have given away a lot of pins, but we changed our strategy.”

Barnes and Jones used a final game of 536 to push their score over the recordmark. Jones closed with 279, while Barnes added 257. “It was a huge advantage for Tommy and [me] to get to bowl together,” Barnes said. “We see the lane very similarly, and we both had a very clear picture of what was going on. We talked our way through everything today.”