BATON ROUGE – The USBC Open championships had kind of gotten away from that middle-of-the-night bowling feeling before coming back to Baton Rouge and the Raising Canes River Center in 2025.

But with 54 lanes available for usage, the after 11:30 p.m. and the 7 a.m. doubles and singles shifts are back in play. Which means bowling finishes each night in those “wee small hours” of the morning and starts soon thereafter again.

Since it is doubles and singles, however, and with a scoreable pattern, there have been some great scores and none more than this past early Wednesday morning when two bowlers rolled perfect games in the same games of the singles portion.

Tanner Simmons of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and Garret Maxey of Greeley, Colorado, etched their names into the tournament’s record book during their singles squad at the River Center.

Simmons posted the 14th 300 of the 2025 event, while Maxey recorded No. 15 just minutes later.

Maxey fired a 740 series in Regular Singles, and Simmons wasn’t far behind, shooting 733. At the moment, Maxey’s score is in the top 50 at the 2025 USBC Open Championships, while Simmons’ total places him in the top 70.

Neither bowler posted a game below 200 during their singles set, with Maxey rolling 214, 226 and 300 and Simmons scoring 225, 208 and 300.

Johnson Has Huge Doubles Set

We’ve seen the exploits of PBA stars E.J. Tackett and Andrew Anderson on the tournament lanes and this past week AJ Johnson posted an outstanding 823 series in doubles. 

“The Open Championships is unique – you get one crack at it,” Johnson said in a USBC release. “You don’t get to bowl a couple squads to try and better your score. You get your one crack and that’s it. You can kind of judge a little bit based on what other people do, but you really have to make your guesses when you’re throwing your practice shots and commit to decisions, commit to the (bowling) balls and everything.

“I’ve always enjoyed this tournament, because everyone gets to bowl,” said Johnson, who made his ninth appearance at the event. “I get to bowl with friends from back home and I also get to bowl with my dad. I don’t get to do that very often.”

Johnson has been bowling the Open alongside his father, Shawn, for several years, sharing the lanes with the man who first introduced him to the sport.

This year, the pair bowled together once again, finishing with a combined score of 1,361 in Regular Doubles. It was a memory that was made even more meaningful with Johnson’s mother in attendance.

“Getting to bowl with him is awesome, and I think this was the first time my mom came out to the Open Championships to watch,” he said. “To bowl a score and have her here as well, it was cool.”

After opening the tournament with a 572 series in team, Johnson rebounded in doubles with games of 277, 269 and 277. He finished singles with a 730 set, and the strong overall showing helped him to 11th place in Regular All-Events with 2,125 (he now sits in 12th place).

Tournament of Champions

The Tournament of Champions was held over the weekend at Premier Lanes and the Coke Classic League champs, the 96 Bulls, were the winners with a score of 3,395.

The tournament allows champions from all the leagues at the two houses the chance to compete for a best-of-the-best tournament title. A Premier Monday night league team, the Swamp Dragons, was second just eight sticks back at 3,387. A senior league team from Premier, the So Close squad, took third at 3,373. 

The Dudley DeBosier winners, the Dutsch Markers, took fourth as the only other team to crack 3,300 at 3,305.

Congrats to all the league champs, and it won’t be long until things start rolling again in August.

Next week, we plan to have state tournament results from Shreveport for year, and less than a month remains in the USBC Open downtown. A reminder, if you are bowling on July 4 at the River Center, there are a lot of activities and the big fireworks show, so plan accordingly with your arrival times and parking.

Until next Monday, good luck and good bowling.