Minnesota’s Josh Kennedy led Saturday’s qualifying with 1,584 for six games as 1,297 made the cut and 1,287 cashed at the 2025 GIBA 11thFrame.com Open at Cherry Lanes inside the Diamond Jo Casino building in Dubuque, Iowa.

The 156 players bowled six games with the top 48 advancing to Sunday’s competition and four additional players cashing.

Evan Flath was second with 1,465, PBA Tour champion Boog Krol third at 1,432, Ryan Powers fourth with 1,429, and Christopher Cieszynski fifth at 1,417.

Kennedy said he shot only 1,067 in the 5-game sweeper on Friday night, attributing that to playing “way too far out for the breakpoint.”

“The gutter was too hooky,” said Kennedy, who used a urethane BLACK HAMMER 78 and “relied on rolling it up the back” crossing about 7- to 8-board at the arrows to start.

In Sunday’s 12 games of semifinals, Kennedy expects to switch to reactive at some point.

Kennedy has a high finish of eighth in 2020 in his six previous 11thFrame.com Opens.

He said he “was fighting myself the last several years … overthinking things and not having a good process.”

Matt Hibbard and Zack Carter tied for 47^th and 48^th at 1,297, and Jackson Saterlee was 52^nd with 1,287, a pin ahead of Brady Gustafson.

At least three lefties — I don’t know every player who made the cut so there may have been more — advanced: defending champion Cam Crowe is 20^th at 1,371, Brandon Kreyer tied for 26^th at 1,340, and Trenton Holz tied for 38^th at 1,317.

And two women made the cut: Jenna Wiliams in 24^th at 1,345, and Brittany Smith in 42^nd at 1,305.

Darin Bloomquist, who won Friday’s sweeper, advanced in a tie for 43^rd at 1,303.

From the Madison Area USBC, Kaiden Storck closed with 247 and 258 to just make it in 46^th with 1,298, and Cody Roedner and Derek Hayes just missed with 1,276 and 1,273, respectively.

Scores are being posted here, and Emil Williams’ BowlsteamTV com is webcasting the tournament here.

Here is the archive of A squad on Saturday, with an interview with Kennedy starting about 3 hours, 34 minutes in.

Here is the archive of B squad on Saturday, with an interview with B squad leader Dawson Peterson (1,409) starting about 3 hours, 28 minutes in.

Here is the archive of C squad on Saturday, with an interview with C squad leader Krol starting about 3 hours, 47 minutes in.

Sunday’s innovative format that comes from the fertile mind of Flanagan features 12 games of bowling starting at 9 a.m. with bonus pins based on score from highest to lowest. For example, if 48 advance to Sunday in each game the highest scorer will get 48 bonus pins, the second-highest scorer 47 pins, so on down to 1 bonus pin for the lowest score each game. Whatever number of finalists there are, that number of bonus pins will go to the high scorer down to 1 pin for the lowest score each game.

Yes, it’s not head-to-head; instead, it’s all-against-one. The idea is to reward the consistently solid bowler and not the one who may bowl the right people at the right time. And everyone who makes the cut gets to bowl all of Sunday's games.

This updating Google doc has the full Flanagan format results.

The top five after 18 games with bonus pins make the stepladder finals, which will be contested on fresh oil and air around 3:45 p.m. to a little later.

The tournament used the same lane pattern for the fourth straight year. It is 37 feet with 24.63 mL of oil and pattern ratios by volume of 1.11-1 on the left and 1.66-1 on the right

The only difference is that Cherry Lanes manager Bob Hochrein said the center has switched from the Brunswick Connect 2 oil it used last year to Brunswick Control 2.

The scoring pace was almost identical to 2024, when the cut was 1,292 and last cash was 1,284.

In 2023, the cut was 1,229 and the cash 1,215.

In 2022, the cut was 1,252 and the cash 1,242.

In my opinion, the field quality continues to grow stronger in young talent with it almost being like a college preseason tournament. And players know what to expect seeing the pattern year after year.

Kennedy attributed some of his success to having “a better general idea of how to play them.”

Hochrein plans to do some testing to make a slight modification to the pattern for next year that would erase some of the familiarity and possibly bring the scoring pace down a bit.

Nick Hoagland, who designs the patterns for USBC, offered Hochrein his expertise in crafting a shorter pattern than the pattern we used for several years prior to 2022 that was a modification of the 2015 U.S. Open pattern designed by Hoagland for USBC.

I earned Hoagland’s services for crafting the current pattern by making a donation to the Make-A-Wish charity tied to the huge Hoosier Classic college tourney H2M Management runs in Indianapolis. (That was an offer he made to anyone.)

Here is what Hoagland said about the pattern before last year's tournament: "I was glad to help the tournament out as Jeff was kind enough to make a donation to Make-A-Wish to help the Columbia 300 Hoosier Classic Bowling Tournament to grant wishes! Jeff, Bob and Joe wanted something different, and shorter, and it is a challenge! The pattern should play out for everyone and I do expect urethane to be in play. I think that the pattern will hold up for 12 games due to the fact that everyone’s ball will be outside of the first arrow at the breakpoint; thus saving the track and middle parts of the lane for later in the block.”

GIBA administrator Joe Engelkes said there is more than $4,000 in added money from GIBA sponsor Ebonite and returning tournament sponsors the Dubuque Regional Sports Commission, Diamond Jo Casino, Cherry Lanes, Brandon Steen/The Steen Team, IAMBowling, Kwik Star/Kwik Trip, and 11thFrame.com. 

My preview of the weekend is here.

Matt McNiel won in 2012, Matt Gasn in 2014, McNiel again in 2015, Jay Watts in 2016, Adam Morse in 2017, Andy Mills in 2018, Nate Stubler in 2019, Jerry Marrs in 2020, Stubler again in 2021, Nick Pate in 2022, Dakota Solonka in 2023, and Crowe in 2024. (No tournament was held in 2013.)