The Wayland boys’ varsity bowling team Tuesday afternoon turned in its best performance of the season, but still fell short 17-13 against league-leading Byron Center.

Coach Sherry Milkusicak said the Wildcats averaged 199.3 and broke the school record for high two-game series.

In the first Baker game, the ‘Cats shot a fine 203 game, but lost to Byron Center’s 235. The boys stayed tough and came back with a 205 game to the Bulldogs’ 146. Wayland was now up 6 points to 4 since it also took the subtotal of the two Baker games.

Byron Center came out on fire in the first set of individual games, shooting 233, 211, 202, 259, 231.  Wayland shot 184, 193, 192, 206, 173.

“As a coach, I would definitely take Wayland’s scores any day,” Miklusicak said. “It just shows how good Byron Center is.”

So Byron Center went up 13-6 heading into the second and final team individual competition.

The second set of individual games swung a bit more in Wayland’s favor, but it wasn’t quite enough. The Wildcats won that set 936-922, but only managed 6 out of the possible 9 points for that game and lost the grand total. The 17-13 loss was by the same score when the two teams met earlier this season. 13-17Over the evening Wayland averaged 199.3 to Byron’s 203.3.

The Wildcats’ two game individual total was 1884, breaking the existing record two game total of 1883.

“As a coach, I am very proud of our performance tonight,” Miklusicak beamed. “Even though the score wasn’t in our favor, it really was like a win tonight. The key reason we broke the record and bowled so well was due to our spare shooting. Tonight we picked up 81% of our spares to last week’s dismal 60%, a drastic increase.

High scores for the evening were Jesse Miling 193 + 215 = 408, Nick Couturier 192, Austen Beggs 206, and Cameron Heintzelman 214.

“Boys — hold your heads up high, I am proud of you” the coach commented.