Nine Events In, Stephanie Schmidt Wins Her First at Outlanes
Stephanie Schmidt had entered 9 ranked tournaments before Wednesday night, and nothing on her record had her finishing better than 24th. At Outlanes Pinball Lounge in Littleton, in the sixth night of the Spring/Summer Woman’s League, she played five games and put up the top score in four of them. That was enough to take the tournament outright over a 15-player field that included the highest-ranked competitor in the room.
Nothing about the setup pointed here. Schmidt sits at IFPA #19,294 and CO NACS #273 out of the 723 ranked players in Colorado, with 3 points and no wins from 6 events this season. Outlanes is a 34-machine bar in Littleton stocked from a 1975 Bally straight through to a Pokémon that arrived this February, six manufacturers deep, cheap to play, and rated a clean 5 stars by all 60 people who have reviewed it.
The Ninth Event Was the One
Schmidt’s record before July 15 reads like a player still learning the format. She went 54th at January’s Flipper Frenzy, then 24th in March, then 35th, 47th, 48th, and 83rd at the lounge’s 1-year anniversary tournament in May. She had been in this league before, back at Woman’s League #1 in June. Her career average finish stands at 37.
Group match play offers no shelter and no ramp-up. Fifteen players, one round, five games apiece, points by finishing position — 11 of the entrants carried an IFPA ranking and 4 did not, and the field averaged #18,168 nationally. Whoever plays five clean games wins, and on Wednesday that was the player ranked 19,294th in the world.
Four Machine Tops in a Three-Player Group
Fifteen doesn’t divide by four, so Schmidt drew a three-player group alongside Alli Manhard and Candace Putnam, scoring 4 points for a win, 2.5 for second, 1 for third. She opened on JAWS (Premium) and won it. She won Fish Tales next. She won Foo Fighters (LE) after that — the only machine used twice all night.
Manhard broke the run on Cactus Canyon (Remake LE), the one game of the five where Schmidt finished second. Then came the closer: Black Knight: Sword of Rage (LE), decided in 13 minutes, the quickest game anyone played all night. Steve Ritchie conceived and designed it, Kevin O’Connor led the art, and Stern built 600 of the LE — three flippers, a six-ball multiball, a Magna-Save magnet, and a motorized gate at the center ramp shaped like a knight’s flail. On the Premium and LE, mode shots can be spotted through the light lock on the upper playfield and the upper loop raises mode value, which is why competitors here tend to live on the left ramp.
Across the night Schmidt finished ahead of Putnam in all 5 of their shared games and ahead of Manhard in 4 of 5. Her positions for the evening: four firsts and a second.
Liz Baker Wins Three, Finishes Second
The top seed was Liz Baker, IFPA #4771 and CO NACS #35, an Omaha player with 83 career tournaments and an average finish of 13. Her group produced the closest thing to a proper fight. Baker took James Bond 007 (60th Anniversary LE) to start, added Venom (LE), and won Baywatch — three firsts in five games, and second place overall when the scores were totaled.
Brittani Silchia had the answers on the other two. She won Toy Story 4 (LE) with Baker second, then took Ghostbusters (Premium) with Baker down in third. Baker finished ahead of Silchia in 3 of their 5 shared games, which is about as tight as a group of four gets. Silchia, a Littleton player 20 tournaments into her career, has moved from #15,309 a month ago to #10,215 now, and she left with a share of third.
Beth Smith drew the hard end of that draw, finishing behind both Silchia and Baker in all five. She and Baker are long-familiar opponents — 12 tournaments together, with Baker ahead in most of them.
Ninety Minutes on Godzilla
The night’s other two groups ran on their own clocks. Emily Unruh, Tammy Lawton, Missy Lechuga, and Brenna Mere put 90 minutes into Godzilla (Premium), the longest game of the tournament, and Unruh came out on top of it. That machine is Keith Elwin’s design with art by Jeremy Packer and a molded Godzilla sculpture rising out of the playfield; the ally Anguirus turns the lockdown-bar action button into a one-time add-a-ball for any multiball, which is a good thing to remember when a group game is already an hour old. Lawton answered with a win on Black Knight in a closely matched four-player game, and Lechuga closed the group out by taking Rollergames.
Unruh’s night also nudged one of the longest-running pairings in the room: she and Beth Smith have now shared 21 tournaments, and Unruh pulled one back tonight in a matchup that stays neck and neck.
In the fourth group, Lily Weybright won on Jack•Bot and again on Pokémon (Premium), while Makenzie Lawton took High Speed and KISS (Premium) and Stacie Benjamin opened with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Premium). Weybright finished ahead of Benjamin in 4 of their 5 shared games and tied Silchia for third overall. She also drew level with Brenna Mere, a rivalry now dead even across 6 shared tournaments — the same thing Schmidt did to Mere over their own 6 events together, in a pairing that remains a coin flip.
A First Win, in Thirteen Minutes and Change
The detail that will stick from Woman’s League #6 is that closing game on Black Knight. Thirteen minutes, three players, and a first career tournament win on the other side of it — on a machine built to punish exactly the kind of player who hasn’t been there before. Schmidt had never finished in the top three of a ranked event. She has now finished first in one.
Final podium:
- 1st — Stephanie Schmidt (IFPA #19,294)
- 2nd — Liz Baker (IFPA #4,771)
- T-3rd — Brittani Silchia (IFPA #10,215)
- T-3rd — Lily Weybright (IFPA #22,991)
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