The 63rd Times-News Open is now in the books and for the second year in a row the tournament came down to the final frame, with the eventual winner needing strikes to claim the title. And also, much like 2025, the leader seemed to be running away until things tightened up at the end. 

Stippich, who opened the day with the lead started slow but kept winning matches, 214-197 over Dalton Kaliszewski and 227-212 over Ryan Park. However, with Killian Kilpatrick on his heels, just winning matches was not enough. When Kilpatrick opened by defeating Taylor Kretz 247-177 he was back in the lead. After besting Michael Machuga 243-224, his lead grew to 32 pins. Things turned badly for Kilpatrick in game 11. With Stippich already done defeating Brandon Wachob 278-212 he knew his lead was gone and after an open in the 9th he was in jeopardy of losing his match as well. When his opponent, Rodrick Baird finished with 195 he still had a chance to salvage the match. He left a 7 pin on a good hit so the match was lost but adding insult to injury, he then missed the spare, giving up 130 pins to Stippich, allowing him to take a 98 pin lead. 

Stippich kept the pedal down beating Mike Shady 279-252 but Kilpatrick was determined to keep himself in the tournament. He defeated D.J. Thompson 278-209 to lose just a single pin. Stippich then finished off an 803 three game set when he took care of Cody Jacobs 246-235. Kilpatrick would garner a 220-204 win over T.J. Mitchell but dropped back by another 26 pins. The lead was 125 with just 3 games to go.

Both players had tough opponents in game 13, Kilpatrick facing Jeff Prue who was sitting in 3rd place and Stippich squaring off against Nick Kightlinger who had clawed his way from 10th at the start of the day to 4th. Kilpatrick got it going again finishing with 267 to Prue’s 208 while the other two were in a battle. They were close the entire game and when Stippich didn’t double in the tenth, the door was open for Kightlinger …. and Kilpatrick. Kightlinger struck on the opening shot but left a solid 8 pin on his second leaving his 2 pins short, losing 233-235. Kilpatrick picked up 32 pins to cut the lead to 93 but the 30 bonus pins Stippich saved was huge.

Down on 3 and 4 Kilpatrick followed an opening spare with 10 strikes to shoot 286 to Alex Ulrich’s 259 and was now looking for some help. Stippich was in his 4th consecutive match where his opponents had leads much of the game and this game was no different against David Warren. Stippich responded again striking out from the 6th for 258 locking out Warren who finished with 234. This time Kilpatrick picked up 26 pins, well shot of what he had hoped setting up match for the title with Stippich leading by 65. With the bonus pins, Kilpatrick would need to win by 36, a seemingly monumental task against the numbers Stippich was putting up. 

Stippich missed a spare in the second and with Kilpatrick striking there seemed to be a glimmer of hope, though brief. In the 5th Kilpatrick’s shot sent the 6 pin soaring into the air, up and over the 10. He followed that with a strike but then could not get another in the 7th. With Stippich putting 5 strikes together after his open it was beginning to look promising but then he failed to carry not once but twice and Kilpatrick kept striking right off the sheet for 258. Stippich knew he needed 223 and that meant he needed a double in the tenth. He was solid on his first shot and then use a light mixer to put one hand on the trophy. He knew he still needed seven and when he saw his final shot heading for the pocket he raised his arms in both victory and relief. Another Times-News Open photo finish and another runner up finish for Kilpatrick, his 4th in 6 years. Both players finished with 14-2 match play records, Stippich’s two losses both at the two-hands of Kilpatrick, in game one and game sixteen. Kilpatrick did shoot 811 for his closing 3.

You might get the impression that this tournament only had 2 contestants and for all intents and purposes, from the perspective of the title, it did. Jeff Prue sat in third after the first round, still in sight of the lead, 86 back. Halfway through the round, he was 342 pins behind and yet still 92 ahead of a fast charging Nick Kightlinger. Kightlinger opened with four match wins, the first three with 240+ games but a loss in game 5 put him 109 back and then he suffered the close loss to Stippich. Prue had taken over third in game 3 and he held that position right to the finish, his best finish by far as his previous best was 10th in 2024. Kightlinger moved into 4th after game 11 and he would remain there as well.

There was a bit more movement further down the leaderboard as defending champ Michael Machuga started 4th dropped to 7th mid round, bounced back to 5th but a loss in the position round allowed both T.J. Mitchell and Mike Shady to pass him. Mitchell made a nice move at the end of the day/ He started 11th and moved to 9th after the first game and then remained there until he defeated Machuga in game 15 to move up to 6th. He had Machuga in his sights again as they were paired in the position round where Mitchell defeated him again, this time handily 268-186. 

Shady entered the position round in 7th and started game 16 with a long string of strikes and the possibility of jumping to 5th but Mitchell held on as Shady defeated Thompson 269-206 finishing 19 pins short of Mitchell. With Machuga floundering, young Taylor Kretz was making a bid to climb a few rungs. She finished with a 241-160 win over Wachob only to fall 3 pins short of Machuga. Her 8th place finish is the best among the women who have made it to the finals. Thompson’s loss dropped him back behind Kretz in 9th.

Dalton Kaliszewski start the day in 5th with some promise but some issues with his thumb made it a particularly difficult day. He was unable to get to 200 in any of his final 4 games and dropped to 11th before rebounding to 10th by defeating Baird 191-183. Wachob’s loss and Warren’s win were both enough to place them in front of Baird with Wachob finishing 11th, Warren 12th and Baird 13th. 

Cody Jacobs was celebrating his 33rd birthday but his fellow competitors weren’t celebrating with his as Jacobs could only muster 2 wins against 6 losses. Jacobs scored better than 6 others above him on the leaderboard but lost bonus pins caused his slip from 13th to 14th.

The final two positions were held by Ryan Park and Alex Ulrich from the 6th game on. Park could just never find a big game and remained steady around 200 averaging 198.8 for the finals. Ulrich did find some bigger games, but many resulted in losses, including his 259-286 loss to his good friend Kilpatrick.

Stippich averaged 246.9 for the 16 games, the 4th best ever. His 14 match wins ties the record accomplished several times however, the best 16 record still belongs to Machuga at 14-1-1. There were no tied matches in this year’s final and 6 of the 16 bowlers ended up with matching 8-8 records.