BOWLING

The Huntington bowling teams wrapped up conference play over the weekend at Signature Lanes in Elkhart (Ind.) with the fourth regular season tournament followed by the CL Championships right after. The tourney format included three team games followed by 12 Baker games.

The lane pattern for the tournament was a short 35-foot pattern. The combination of the lane surface and oil pattern turned the scoring pace for the day into a low-scoring, challenging and competitive environment. The Baker games from this event were then used to determine seeding for a four-team match play championship finals in the afternoon.

The HU men bowled their way to a fourth place finish with a score of 4630.  Michael Lichtenberg led the Foresters with a pin count of 570 (190 average) in the team games to finish tenth out of 74 bowlers. Baker play went better for Shockey’s crew as evidenced by earning the third seed in the finals where they lost in straight sets to 2nd-seeded Mount Vernon.

“This is two tournaments in a row where we can’t seem to get things going in team games,” said Coach Mike Shockey. “The Hoosier Classic is coming up in a couple of weeks and we’re going to be working hard to fix this issue and clean up our spare shooting.”

The Forester women stepped up, showing their competitive side in a tough environment to finish second with a score of 4347. Lilly Pryor knocked over 492 pins (164 average) to pace HU and finish 13th out of 67 bowlers. The Foresters were in contention all day and stepped things up even more in Baker games.

Huntington topped the field in Baker play with a 165 average, five pins per game higher than their nearest competitor, to earn the top seed in the CL Championships. After knocking 4th-seeded Mount Vernon out, Huntington took top-seeded Marian to three games before suffering defeat.

“The women did a great job of putting the issues of the season behind them and ignoring the tough lane conditions,” said Shockey. “They were tough mentally and physically. They went shot-for-shot with every team at this tournament and proved they may not be flashy, but they can bowl together as a team as well as anyone.”

Next up is the Hoosier Classic scheduled for February 15-16 in Indianapolis.