Bowling Competes at Historic Mid-States Championships
WICHITA, Kan. – The Avila bowling teams headed west to Wichita to compete in one of the biggest events in collegiate bowling, the Mid-States Championships, this past weekend. In the midst of some of the best quality the team will see all season, both squads fared well, finishing in the top 25 of their respective fields.
Mid-States is perennially not only one of the biggest fields in collegiate bowling in terms of quantity of competing teams but also one of the deepest fields in terms of quality of competing teams. It features programs from across the country and across all levels of collegiate bowling. It's a USBC Tier 1 event, in which teams that finish high are rewarded with more points towards qualification for ITC sectionals compared to Tier 2 events. And it's been hosted in one location or another for close to half a century.
All of that combines to mean that this is one of the most significant events the Eagles will compete at all season. The quality of opposing teams and the difficulty of the competition lived up to expectations, and both Eagle teams fared fairly well: the Avila women finished the weekend in 17th place out of 24 qualified teams, and the men finished in 23rd out of 32.
The tournament consisted of six team games and 20 Baker games split between Saturday and Sunday across two different bowling centers in the greater Wichita area. Only the top eight teams in both fields made the cut for bracket play, further adding to the eminence of the event.
There were more than 300 men's bowlers on the final individual leaderboard, one of the largest totals the team will see all year, and Aidan Tesdall led the way for the Eagles with a 244 showing in game four on Saturday and a six-game average of 193, good for 69th in the entire field. Bryce Stewart averaged 202 over his four games and Brody Stanback shot 180 over his; freshman Colton Cline appeared in five of the six team games to help Avila finish 23rd. Wisconsin Whitewater, a team Avila will hardly ever compete against, won the bracket play on the men's side.
More than 200 women recorded qualifying individual scores over the six team games Saturday, and Avila was paced, as usual, by junior Devyn Coleman, who topped out at 212 and averaged 189 over the six games, good for the 15th best mark in the entire field, an impressive feat given the conditions and the competition. Claire Busch was next with a 161.3 average, firmly in the top 100 at 65th. Newman University from just down the road knocked off Mount Mercy to win the bracket championship.
This event kicks off a planned stretch of four straight weekends of competitions for the Avila bowling programs. Up next is a bit of a shorter trip just over the state line into Kansas for the Jayhawk Challenge, which will see the teams in two different locations: the Eagle women will compete in Topeka and the men in Lawrence, beginning early on Saturday, October 28. Details on how to watch and follow along will be posted on our website, avilaathletics.com; as always, you can tune in to the team's live streams directly on their Facebook pages.
