PARMA HEIGHTS, OHIO—Vanderbilt Associate Head Coach Josie Barnes won the Nationwide PWBA Greater Cleveland Open Saturday, edging out Singapore’s Cherie Tan is a thrilling 10th frame, 223-213.
Tan and Barnes had been at or near the top of the standings all week so it seemed only fitting the two would emerge in the championship match of the stepladder. Tan clung to a one-pin lead heading into the dramatic 10th, where the Commodore bowling legend would finish her game first. Barnes coolly delivered three straight strikes to put the pressure on Tan, one of the tour’s top professionals. Needing to produce three strikes of her own to win the title, Tan left the 9-pin standing on her first ball and Barnes had won the $10,000 first prize.
“I knew if I didn’t strike out I probably wasn’t going to win the match,” Barnes told media afterward. “I knew Cherie was going up and make some great shots since she’s been making them all week. I made sure I stuck to my process and after I got the third strike I sat down and told myself if its meant to be it’ll happen.”
Barnes, the anchor on Vanderblt’s 2007 national championship team and a member of the school’s Hall of Fame, has now won three times on the professional tour. In 2016 she captured the Rochester Open and last year she won the East Hartford Open.
