BOWLING

The Huntington bowling program spent the weekend at two different tournaments which included a Crossroads League event at Allstar Bowl in Indianapolis followed by the AHBA conference championship tournament at the Monroe Sports Center in Michigan.

The Crossroads format was four team games followed by 16 Baker games while the AHBA event was a unique format featuring 30 Baker games and one team game.

“The last two weekends have been long a grueling test for us, but we have stepped up and performed decently well,” said Coach Mike Shockey. “We’re going to reinforce some spare shooting consistency, but lane play, and equipment choices have been pretty good for the players.”

Saturday’s league tourney was the third of four regular season events. Both the men’s and women’s varsity teams finished in third place out of the nine-team fields. In JV action, the women claimed second, and the men took third.

On the men’s side, the varsity squad bowled a 6410. Michael Lichtenberg paced Huntington with his four-game average of 191.8 for a total pin count of 767. The JV crew finished the day with a 6118 total behind Nathan Brazeau’s 197.3 average which proved HU’s top score of the tourney.

The Forester women knocked down 6169 pins. Lilly Pryor had a standout day earning her first All-Tournament Team praise with a 189.75 average (759 total pins) for fifth place out of 85 bowlers.  The JV program claimed the highest finish of the day with their second place finish having tallied 5375 pins.  Leading the way was Allison Slanker with an average of 166.5 for second place in the JV women’s division.

“This was a difficult house for everyone,” noted Shockey. “Overall, the scoring pace was low and due to many machine breakdowns, the pace of play was really slow too.

“But I’m proud of how our players maintained their focus and continued to play with the grit and determination that we have come to expect. Lilly and Allison have worked hard and to see them walk away with some hardware and the recognition of making the all-tournament teams makes the hard work worth it.”

The format of the AHBA(American Heartland Bowling Association) conference championship tournament on Sunday was a first for Shockey and crew. “We are a good Baker game team, so all the coaches were excited to see this format play out.”

The HU men finished fourth of out 17 teams with a score of 6943. Matt Foutz led the team with a 222 game and an 11th place finish out of 85 bowlers. The women took fifth out of 12 teams with a score of 6254. Brooklyn Suzuki made her first all-tournament team with a great 265 game to lead all bowlers – both men’s and women’s.

“It was good to see the men put together two solid weekends in a row and see them put team performance above individual performance especially in Baker games,” said Shockey. “When we get to post-season play it is all Baker games, so to see both teams put together solid Baker sets in a variety of scenarios and conditions is really exciting as we get to that post-season push.”

The Foresters head to Michigan again on Saturday to compete in the Alma College Scotty Classic.