Staff photo / Preston Byers. Adam Barta (left) poses with his Warren Challenge trophy alongside tournament director Ted Snyder on Sunday at Freeway Lanes in Warren.

WARREN — Adam Barta emerged from the 46th Warren Challenge as champion Sunday, holding off stiff challenges from the likes of Chuck Zarbaugh and Robert Harvischak to win his sixth Challenge tournament and his first since 2019.

Halfway through Sunday’s finals at Freeway Lanes — the 10 competitors bowled in a round-robin match play format plus a final game — Barta sat in fourth place behind Zarbaugh, Harvischak and James Nolen. Around that point, Barta decided to make a change.

“The last five games or so, I just made a little adjustment and it ended up working out,” Barta said. “It was a gamble, but it ended up working out. It was either going to be really bad or really good. Ended up being really good, and I was just fortunate enough to win.”

Barta explained the adjustment came in his ball roll. After struggling to hook his ball how he wanted to, which left pins standing and the multi-time champion farther down in the standings than he would like, he opted to go for a more straightforward approach — literally.

“[I] kept my ball in a straighter line and took the wishy-washiness of the lane pattern out of the way,” Barta said. “Because this is the most difficult that [the lanes] have played the entire tournament. Last Saturday we were here, they were somewhat difficult. But today, if you threw a bad shot, you were likely not going to strike.”

The adjustment paid off in a big way, as Barta rose from fourth after five games, while averaging 218, to first heading into the 10th and final game with a 57-pin lead over Zarbaugh. However, with the final game pitting the first and second-place bowlers against each other, and 30 bonus pins awarded to each game’s winner, Zarbaugh needed to edge out Barta by just 28 pins to win the tournament.

“Adam’s obviously the toughest guy in the area to bowl, but I knew I had a pretty good look on that lane because I had just come off that lane the game before that,” Zarbaugh said. “So my mentality was just to keep doing what I was doing. And I heard that he had been struggling on that pair [of lanes] beforehand.”

Unfortunately for Zarbaugh, Barta’s struggles were behind him and another title was in front of him. In fact, Barta bowled a 261 in the final game, his best of the day, which was bumped to a 291 with the 30 bonus pins.

The Warren Challenge win is Barta’s sixth. First competing more than 15 years ago, he previously won the tournament in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2019.

“Adam is the best bowler in the area, hands down,” Warren Challenge tournament director Ted Snyder said. “Adam has won some tournaments on the big scene. He’s absolutely

the best bowler in the area, no doubt about it.”

Zarbaugh finished the tournament in second and was followed up by four-time champion Harvischak, Nolen and Seth Dunn.

Moving forward, Snyder, who has been running the Warren Challenge for the last 22 years, will be stepping away and leaving the tournament in the hands of a new committee.

“It’s just time,” said Snyder, who is also the general manager of Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator.

Barta, who first competed in the Warren Challenge in 2009, praised the tournament’s leadership for the respect, care and passion they gave to the event.

“The thing with this tournament that is unlike others is Ted and his wife, Ann, and their staff and the entire Warren Association, they kept the tradition of the tournament, they kept the integrity of the tournament,” Barta said. “Over time, things change, people change, people go. They’ve always kept it as a very special and rewarding event.”

Neither Snyder nor Barta foresees drastic, immediate changes with the Warren Challenge.

“I doubt that they’ll change very much initially,” Snyder said. “But I’m hopeful that if they see a need for something to change in order for the tournament to prosper, that they make that change, and I’m confident that they will.

“But at the same time, there are some folks involved in that committee that also are concerned about the tradition of the tournament and will do everything they can to keep that at the forefront and keep it as prestigious as it has been all these years.”