BOWLING

The HU women’s bowling team brought home the team title and landed two players on the All-Tournament Team at the first ever Crossroads League tournament this past weekend at Colonial City Lanes while the men finished third. The format of the one-day event included four team games and 16 Baker games.

The Huntington women earned the crown by posting a total score of 6387, edging out a talented Spring Arbor crew for the title by six pins. The Foresters snatched two of the three top spots behind junior Amber Elliott’s second place finish. The Northwood (Ohio) native tallied a four-game average of 199.0 for a total pin count of 796.

Sophomore Katie Fraser finished third with her 189.75 four-game average for a 759 total. The pair were both named to the inaugural CL All-Tournament Team. Rounding out Huntington’s other top finishes included Paige New (9th, 182.0 average), Kayli Iorio (25th, 151.0 average) and Jessica Fraser (43rd, 142.3 average).

The Forester JV squad was also in action to finish third in the reserve tourney. Bailey Wright paced her team by finishing 11th overall with a 170.5/four-game average that totaled 682 pins.

The girls learned a lot from the tournament last weekend and went to work to start correcting things,” said Coach Mike Shockey. “We took some huge steps in getting to be the team we can be this weekend.

“It was a whole team victory. There was an intensity and drive to both the varsity and JV teams that propelled them to the win.”

Six teams competed on Saturday with HU topping the field followed by Spring Arbor (6381), Marian (6284), Mount Vernon (5188), IWU (4876) and Bethel (4484).

The Forester men turned in a third-place score of 6555. Senior Dylan Crowley was a bright spot for Shockey’s crew by finishing fifth individually with his 207.8 per game average to earn a spot on the All-Tournament Team. Austin Schultz claimed ninth by averaging 200.5 over four games for an 802 pin total.

Derek Leyba carded a 187.3 average for three games for 23rd place while Daniel Burzynski (178.7 average) and Dylan Herring (172.0 average) finished 25th and 26th respectively.

“The men spent most of the day in second place but are still struggling finding consistency in scoring game to game,” noted Shockey. “Dylan has worked really hard on his game and the improvements are showing early in the season.

“The guys are going to get there. We haven’t had a men’s team here that has worked as hard and communicated this well in quite some time. Once we get back to the consistent shot making this group is capable of, we’re going to see the consistency and the scoring pace go up to be able to compete with any school in the conference.”

Marian won the men’s title with 7359 pins followed by Spring Arbor (6752), HU (6555), Bethel (6289), Mount Vernon (5830) and IWU (5393).

Next up for Huntington is the Western Shootout in Indianapolis on October 16-17.