Morgantown, WV – The defending PBA50 Player of the Year and this year’s top overall points leader John Janawicz is leading the charge at the Johnny Petraglia PBA50 Tournament of Champions presented by Pleasant Day Schools.

During Thursday’s final qualifying block, Janawicz had games of 236, 227, 256, 203, 256, 193, 248 and 238 to improve to +476. His 232.13 average on the day put him 56-pins ahead of Amleto Monacelli, who led the B-squad. 

Janawicz has made six stepladder finals appearances already this season. He has put himself into a good position looking ahead to Friday’s Advancers Round and the start of round-robin match play. With this being the final tournament of the year, he reflected on his season.  

“The winning has not been near as plentiful this season, but one thing I did this year that I didn’t last year, was I got a check every week in every event. I have gotten smarter in those regards,” Janawicz said. “It has been a good season. I would like to end it strong and get another major.”

Monacelli posted another solid qualifying block. He shot 268, 203, 253, 225, 201, 212, 218 and 242 to improve to +420 overall.

“I thought they were hooking a lot earlier and when you tried to throw it hard, it didn’t make it back. I was lucky that I could get around it a little bit," Monacelli said. "But every shot that was slow was a split, so the key was to keep the speed up to get it through the fronts.” 

Monacelli is ahead of last year’s TOC champion Tom Hess by one pin. Dan Knowlton is in fourth place at +382 followed by Brad Angelo in fifth at +381. Pete McCordic was the final bowler to make the cut at +117. The top 32 bowlers will move into the Advancers Round starting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday. 

They will bowl eight games with all pins carrying over and the top 16 will advance to round-robin match play Round 1 starting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Round 2 will begin at 11 a.m. ET  on Saturday with the final eight games to determine the top five. The finals will start at 6 p.m. only on BowlTV.

Top 10 PBA50 Tournament of Champions:

  1. John Janawicz, 3,676 (+476)
  2. Amleto Monacelli, 3,620 (+420)
  3. Tom Hess, 3,619 (+419)
  4. Dan Knowlton, 3,582 (+382)
  5. Brad Angelo, 3,581 (+381)
  6. John Burkett, 3,567 (+367)
  7. Bill Rowe, 3,567 (+367)
  8. Mika Koivuniemi, 3,537 (+337)
  9. Randy Weiss, 3,526 (+326)
  10. Pete Weber, 3,513 (+313) 

Full standings - PBA50 Tournament of Champions

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