BOWLING

The Huntington bowling teams spent last Saturday competing in the third American Heartland conference tournament of the season where the women took fourth and the men finished eighth. The format of the tourney included five traditional games and 12 Baker games.

“Overall, we are a pretty young team so it’s good to get a few tournaments under our belts before conference play starts in December,” said Coach Mike Shockey. “All of our players have been in situations that they wouldn’t have experienced at the high school level.

We’re learning and working hard every day to better handle the transitions and changes with lane patterns at the collegiate level. I still feel confident in the direction we’re headed and where we will be by the end of the season.”

The Forester men bowled their way to an eighth place finish out 16 schools with a pin total of 7215. Dale Horstmann continued his strong freshman campaign with a 9th place finish out of 152 bowlers. He tallied 1083 total pins for a 217 average.

“Dale has had a solid start to his career with several top ten finishes and already grabbing an all-tournament team honor,” said Shockey. “Right now, the guys struggle when the front part of the lane starts to hook. We’re working on it and through hard work during practices and the experience we have gained early in the season, we’ll be ready for the conference season.”

The HU women tumbled 6349 pins for the day, spending most of their time in third until a late charge from Alma pushed them to fourth. Senior Kate Fraser paced the Foresters with a fifth place finish individually to earn a spot on the All-Tournament Team with her 189 average.

“The women almost are the opposite of the men,” noted Shockey. “They struggle early in the day and usually finish strong. It was a great showing for Katie, we thought about pulling Katie after game three. She shot a 127 game three with game two not much better.

“She finished the third game with a good look to the pocket and we decided to let her start game four. It turned out to be a good decision as she shot a tournament-high game of 245.”

Shockey and crew are off for several weeks before opening up league play on December 1 in Fort Wayne, Ind.