It was a pretty good couple of outings Monday afternoon at the Rock ‘N Bowl Lanes, where the home team Wayland boys and Lady Wildcats came up with dual match victories over visiting O-K Gold Conference rival Grand Rapids Catholic Central.
The girls won handily 27-3, but the boys had to outlast the Cougars in an 18-12 thriller, leaving the girls with 12-1 overall record and the boys at 6-7.
The ladies swept both Baker games to go up 10-0 with games of 125 and 143.
Match points won in game one were from Breanna Hyde 159, Haven Baker, Isabella Harnish 217 and Kadence Bottrall 183. Match points won in game two were from Breanna Hyde 148, Kadence Bottrall 215, and Isabella Harnish 213.
“I wish I had more details like in the past, but we are having too much fun with so many bowlers and with the boys varsity match being soo close tonight,” said coach Eric Bottrall. “It sure is fun when both teams win!”
The Wayland guys rolled a 151 in the first Baker game and it was good enough to beat Catholic Central’s 123.
“We set a goal (OK, I did) to have two fewer opens in Baker two,” said coach Sherry Miklusicak. “Well we ended up with one fewer open, but it worked for a 201-147 win. This is just where we wanted to be in the match as we had the lead now, 10-0.”
It is tough for a team to recover from a 10-0 deficit, but Catholic Central gave it an honest effort. The Wildcats boys only needed to take 6 of the next 20 points to win the day.
“Frankly, as coach, I was nervous after we only took 2 of the next 9 points as Catholic got lined up against us. We were down a varsity player (he finally got into drivers training class, as the waiting lists are so long), and two other varsity players were just struggling.
“Fortunately for us, senior Carson Beck was on fire! He took his point as high roller for the ‘Cats all evening with a 202 game. We brought in freshman Carter Decker to roll the 10th frame and that point was taken by just 6 pins.”
The leadoff bowler for Catholic rolled a 246 and bowlers four and five rolled 219 and 215, respectively.
“We knew we needed to bowl very well in game two, as we needed four more points,” Miklusicak said. That meant we needed four of our five guys to take their point against a team that had turned the momentum against us, or we needed to somehow grab total pins. We needed every pin we could get.”
It actually was such a close match that it came down to the anchor bowlers. Catholic chose to just sit down to put the pressure on Stephen Harnish, handled the pressure like a pro and nailed the first two strikes, putting total pins out of reach for the Cougars.
Also key to this win was senior Chandler Caruso’s entering to finish a strong end (frames 6-10 which included a three-bagger), Carter Beck’s 3-9-10 tough conversion in the 10th to take his point, and Carter Decker’s match point.
“Carter bowled very well at Friday’s practice and in his first game on the JV side to earn his way into the varsity line-up tonight,” Miklusicak said. “We are proud of the boys tonight and it felt really good to see them fight so hard!”
Go bowling teams keep up the great work stay safe