Jeremy Sossei and Johnny Archer
The Turning Stone Classic X has finally drawn to a close and what a fantastic story came out of this week. This venue brings out the best and worst in players due to the field of champions that make the trip to Verona, non-stop intense play, and overwhelming arena setting.
One young player out of Connecticut, Jeremy Sossei, brought his solid and methodical play to the event and made a huge splash with those that did not already know his name. Sossei took the bull by the horns and purposefully maintained his efforts to dominate one opponent after another starting with Ewa Laurance 9-1, George Lord 9-1, Chris Lazarovitch 9-3, Dan Doerner 9-5, Louis Rios 9-4, and Ronnie Wiseman 9-7. Sossei did not allow an opponent to achieve more than five games in any set until he ran into Wiseman on the final day of the event. Sossei’s next set against Johnny Archer in the hot-seat cooled him down only slightly as he jumped ahead to a 6-2 lead, but ultimately fell to Archer 9-7.
Archer made his way to the hot-seat match by dominating the top section of the winners bracket with wins over Justin Acker 9-2, a nail biting match with Vermont’s Dave Fernandez 9-8, Edwin Montal 9-4, Bucky Souvanthong 9-5, Mike Wallace 9-1, and on Sunday passing Tony Chohan in a tight set 9-7.
On the one-loss side Sunday, Mika Immonen and Louis Ulrich got down to business, with Immonen progressing quickly by a final of 9-3. Stevie Moore was also eliminated by Dennis Hatch 9-5 as Hatch progressed toward his goal of earning top honors. Hatch then moved on to best Immonen 9-6 and found himself locked in with Sossei in the semi-finals. It would be Sossei that would take control of the semis to force Hatch to settle for a respectable third place finish as Sossei wasted no time and took down mighty Hatch handily 9-2 to have his chance at the one man that defeated him this entire week.
In the final round (one race to thirteen), Sossei battled it out with Archer in the approximately three hour match, but succumbed to him by a close final score of 13-8. We look forward to seeing quite a bit more from this up-and-coming young champion in the year to come and congratulate Johnny Archer on being the Turning Stone Classic X Champion.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Clayton
