The Wayland girls’ varsity bowling team won’t be going undefeated this year. Zeeland West pulled off a 19-11 upset Wednesday afternoon.
“Traveling to Zeeland Lanes this afternoon the last thing on my mind was an upset,” said coach Sherry Miklusicak. “The Lady ‘Cats have been tenacious and not just recently, as coach Bill Holbrook has developed as strong girls bowling program.”
The loss dropped the Lady Wildcats’ overall season to 3-1-1. The boys’ squad, meanwhile, fell to 2-3 with a 24-6 defeat at the hands of the Dux.
Miklusicak has been doing double duty in the wake of Holbrook accepting the head coaching post for Midland University in Nebraska. There are rumors that Holbrook will return in March to lead the girls again.
“Coach Holbrook had prepped the girls, advising them that other schools would be targeting them because they are known as one of the top teams in the state,” Miklusicak said. “It really didn’t feel like we were beaten by another team because tonight we were beaten by ourselves. The ladies were plagued by opens and bad breaks in every game except Baker game two – which would be the only shining spot of the entire evening.
“There were so many pocket 7 pins and 10 pins that the scorekeepers were apologizing for them! We had good first ball counts, but needed desperately to convert our spares.”
In Baker game one, Wayland lost 184 to 145 with 5 opens. The girls rebounded with a 210-144 win in the second Baker.
“We were now up 6-4 going into individual matches. It was only Monday night when Marissa Bruinsslot and Sydney Urben combined for nearly 500 pins just by themselves and tonight we only mustered 733 pins. We ended up losing by 27 pins.
Wayland needed to win total in the second game being down 11-8, but proceeded to leave 22 open frames, and lost by just 21 pins.
“If there is anything positive to come out of tonight’s match is that while it’s nice to have a perfect record; we no longer have that monkey hanging on our backs,” Miklusicak noted
Zeeland West boys beat Wayland last year depite Cameron Heintzleman’s perfect 300 game.
“I was pretty hopeful when Zeeland’s first Baker game was only 170. Unfortunately, we were plagued with 5 opens and only had 144.”
The Wildcats came back to take Baker game two, 160–136.
“I remember them (the Dux) as such a powerful team,” Miklusicak said. Regrettably, I wasn’t wrong about Zeeland and while their scores were decent, we just couldn’t step up to match them tonight.”
In game one, sophomore Dillon Smith had high game for Wayland with a 203 and Junior Bryan Franck had 172, but Wayland lost 888-782.
In the second set of individual games the Wildcats only had managed a 647 and didn’t take any points.
“We are hitting the pocket better than we did earlier in the year, but still struggle with consistency and spare shooting,” the coach said.
PHOTO: Sophomore Dillon Smith (Photo courtesy of Terry Ellis)
