Kim Smith Takes Ball Busters W5 by a Single Point
Kim Smith finished Wednesday night at Pinball Gallery with 21 points. Terri Morton had 20. So did Tessa Morton, who tied her for second. Five rounds of four-player group play, 30 games, 137 minutes from first ball to final tally — and Week 5 of the Ball Busters Pinball League came down to whether Smith could hold second place on an 11-minute game of El Dorado City of Gold.
The 24-player field that produced that margin was this league at its usual weekly scale: 14 IFPA-ranked entrants and 10 unranked, a national average of #15543 and a median of #6611. Ten carried a Pennsylvania NACS number, averaging #218 among the state’s 864 ranked players. Nobody in the room was chasing a national title. Everybody was chasing the player standing next to them.
Six Machines, Six Different Winners in Round 1
Bill Disney’s draw was seeded off IFPA women’s rankings, which put Terri Morton on the top line and Neveah Garman at the bottom of 24. Round 1 ignored all of it. Six groups went to six machines and came back with six different names on top: Kathy Hecht on KISS, Kate Cicero on Count-Down, Becky Egolf through a 21-minute Stranger Things (Pro), Jennifer Gold on Sorcerer with Terri Morton second, Ruth Parks on Roller Disco, and Tessa Morton on Embryon, where Smith settled for 3 points and second.
Scoring is 5-3-2-1 by position within the group, which makes an opening round something to survive more than something to win. Parks, one year into competitive play with 8 tournaments on her record, took the maximum anyway — and she was not finished.
The Pinball Gallery gave them plenty to work with. The lineup runs 82 machines from 1975 through 2025 across 13 manufacturers, and across all 30 games not one title came up twice. The room’s 4.9 average over 296 reviews tends to circle the same qualities: a counter staff that talks to strangers, a floor where a novice can stand at a game without feeling watched, and enough breadth that regulars still find something they haven’t put a ball through.
Elizabeth Hollinger’s 13 Minutes on Ghostbusters
Stern’s 2016 Ghostbusters Premium is a John Trudeau design carrying a color-changing Stay Puft marshmallow man, an interactive holograph projector, and a pair of electromagnets under the lower playfield doing slingshot duty. In Round 2 it produced the night’s least likely result. Elizabeth Hollinger — IFPA #26097, 8 career tournaments, her home listed simply as Pinball Gallery — took the group ahead of Samantha Christina, then Tessa Morton, then Jamme Thomas. Morton carried the strongest national ranking in the building at #2860. The ratings gave Hollinger something close to a 1-in-6 shot. Thirteen minutes later, the 5 points were hers.
If you draw the Premium in a future round, the competition-mode ghost guessing is worth counting: it hands back a correct pick for every 10 ghosts earned, and the very next pick after that one is always wrong. Knowing when the machine is lying to you is most of the battle with it.
Hollinger’s card read 4-1-2-4-3 and left her 15th on the night. The 5 came against the best-ranked player in the field.
Genie Turns the Middle Rounds Kim Smith’s Way
Smith won three groups in a row. The run opened on Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy — Bally’s 1975 Elton John machine, the oldest title in the Gallery’s lineup — over Jhenny Adams, Kathy Furlong, and Kathy Hecht in 19 minutes.
Then came Genie, and Genie is worth a paragraph. Gottlieb shipped it in January 1979, an Ed Krynski design under Gordon Morison art, roughly 6,800 built, a widebody crowded with a seven-bank of drop targets, a four-bank behind it, a spinning target, and a kick-out hole. The bonus stacks up fast on it, which makes tilting away a live ball one of the more expensive mistakes the game offers — remember that before you lean on it. Smith took the group in 12 minutes, ahead of Hollinger, Ruth Parks, and Anita Thallmayer: the eventual winner and the eventual fourth-place finisher on the same machine, in the round where the standings started to take shape. She closed the run with a 23-minute win on Metallica Remastered (Premium) to reach 18 points.
Terri Morton’s one slip came in that same third round, a 2-point third place on Godzilla (Premium) behind Kate Cicero and Samantha Christina. Everywhere else she finished first or second. In a tournament decided by a single point, that is where the point went.
The night also moved three long-running ledgers. Smith and Terri Morton have shared 8 tournaments and split them evenly down the middle; this one went Smith’s way. Her pairing with Jamme Thomas runs longer — 10 shared events, deadlocked until Wednesday, when Smith came out ahead. Terri Morton, for her part, stayed in front of Anita Thallmayer again, nudging a tight 16-tournament history a little further her direction.
Both Mortons Win Round 5, and It Still Isn’t Enough
Smith carried 18 points into the last round, three clear of both Mortons, with Parks lurking at 14. Terri Morton drew Harry Potter (Arcade), Jersey Jack’s 2025 machine, and won a 27-minute game. Tessa Morton drew Legends of Valhalla (Deluxe) and won hers, also 27 minutes — the two longest games of the round, both landing exactly where the Mortons needed them to.
Smith’s group was on El Dorado City of Gold, the 1984 Gottlieb, and it took 11 minutes. Lisa Kavanagh took it. Smith took second, and second was enough: 21 to 20 to 20. Across the two games those two shared on the night, each finished ahead of the other once.
Parks closed with a win on Black Knight 2000 for 19 points and fourth, one shy of the tie. None of the top four finished a group worse than third all night, over five rounds apiece.
What Wednesday Does for Smith’s Summer
Smith arrived on a run of 22nd, 25th, 19th, 21st, and 31st. Set against 187 tournaments across 11 years, 13 wins in the last three, and a career average finish of 12, that stretch read as a lull rather than a slide — and this ends it. She sits PA NACS #55 of 864 with 23 points and one win in 10 events this season, and her IFPA number came in at #4980, up from #5751 a year ago. Ball Busters runs weekly at the Gallery, so Week 6 arrives soon enough, and both runners-up have something to answer with: Tessa Morton’s rating has climbed all season behind the field’s best national ranking, and Terri Morton, the top seed here, has been as high as #1394 back in 2022.
Ball Busters Pinball League — Summer 2026 W5 · July 15, 2026 · Pinball Gallery, Malvern, PA
- Kim Smith (IFPA #4980) — 21 points
- Terri Morton (IFPA #3606) — 20 points (tie)
- Tessa Morton (IFPA #2860) — 20 points (tie)
Previously at the Gallery: Ball Busters Summer 2026 W4.
No comment yet, add your voice below!