Bowling Begins 2023 Season with Strong Showing at Warrior Open
OMAHA, Neb. – The Avila bowling teams kicked off the third season of the program with a strong showing at the Midland Warrior Open in Omaha this weekend. All four squads made the trip to the season's first competition, and all four finished in the top five of their respective fields, highlighted by the women's junior varsity team finishing in first place in their division.
Fresh off a banner (two banners, to be precise) year in 2022-23, a fully stocked Avila bowling squad, now featuring full varsity and JV squads on both the men's and women's sides for the first time, began the 2023-24 season at Midland University's Warrior Open, featuring a standard format of Baker games plus team games to determine final overall standings after two days of action.
It was the first taste of the world of collegiate bowling for many of the Eagles, including nearly all of the JV women's team. That didn't faze that fivesome much, as the group of four freshmen – Samantha Hulse, Liz Blackman, Britany Mohling and Emma Foland – as well as incumbent sophomore Tori Bestor knocked down a total of 6141 to finish atop the field. Hastings was the only other school to field a JV women's squad, but the Eagles still outpaced the Broncos by nearly 400 pins to win the small event.
Avila's JV men's squad, featuring six brand new Eagles, finished third in a field of four teams with a score of 7210, highlighted by freshman Colton Cline averaging over 243 in his four games – he didn't bowl Avila's first game just by random selection, but had he kept up that average over that fifth game he would have had the highest average in the entire field. He still finished 18th in total pinfall, even though everyone else in the top 25 bowled all five games.
Men's varsity was the deepest of the four fields, with a total of nine teams competing, and Avila finished right in the middle, in fifth, with a score of 7798. Three sophomores, three juniors and one senior, all returners, comprised Avila's varsity lineup in the first competition of the year. Max Sturgeon had the best individual game of the event, a near-perfect 296 in the fifth team game; Brody Stanback led the team with an average of 197.4 with Aidan Tesdall right behind at 195.2, both among the 20 best averages in the field. Hosts Midland finished first in the men's varsity field.
The women's varsity field was slightly smaller with seven teams competing, but once again Avila finished right in the middle, fourth, with a team score of 7252, just three pins behind third-place Midland. True freshman Victoria Leal led the Eagles in her first collegiate event with an average of 192, tied for the sixth-best mark in the entire field. She missed a spot on the All-Tournament Team, typically awarded to the bowlers with the five highest averages in each field, by only 19 pins. Devyn Coleman finished two pins outside the top ten with a 182 average, and all five members of the varsity crew placed inside the top 16. Coe College finished in first in the women's varsity field.
After a somewhat early start to the season, Avila bowling will now get a bit of a break from competition before the season resumes in earnest in mid-October with the Mid-States Championships, a USBC Tier 1 event that will attract a ton of the top teams in the country to Wichita next month. That's coming up on October 21 and 22; as always, Avila Bowling will live stream all of the action on its Facebook pages, and links to follow along will be shared on our website, avilaathletics.com.
