Bowling Makes History at 2021 Midland Open

OMAHA, Neb. – Caleb Wangler fired off the best individual game of the weekend, Evan Serrage and Devyn Coleman had strong showings in their first collegiate events, and the Avila bowling teams made history, pulling off impressive finishes at the 2021 Midland Open in Omaha on September 25 and 26, the first event in program history.

"The players were in it 100%. We had some nerves going in, but those vanished virtually after the first practice ball - they were ready to go," head coach Paul Wolf said. "The thought was, 'Hey, we can do this.' And we went out there and did it. It was a great event."

The NAIA is planning to tinker with formats throughout the season as bowling continues to move into the forefront of the NAIA athletics landscape, which meant no squad competing at this year's Midland Open knew exactly what to expect from the event until a day or two beforehand.

Ultimately, the two-day event included five standard team games, in which every bowler on a five-person team throws a typical ten frames, trying to rack up as many pins as possible. For each of those five games, every individual's ten-frame score is tallied together to create the team score – and every team is paired with another squad from a different school on the same pair of lanes, and the team with the higher combined score for that game is declared the head-to-head winner of that matchup. Both Avila bowling teams snagged a few heads-up victories, including some over established programs like Kansas Wesleyan and Barton Community College, in their first weekend as a college program.

In addition to the five standard team games and the ensuing bracket-style elimination rounds (both Avila teams picked up wins in the knockout stages as well), the event featured 20 total "Baker" games, wherein all five members of a team throw one frame in sequence until the team throws ten frames total. Essentially, every member of a team throws two frames per game in every Baker game – and there were 20 total Baker games over the weekend. It makes for a lot of bowling in a short period of time for every athlete, and the Eagles acquitted themselves very well in their first go-round.

"Now that we've got one under our belt, we know what to expect," said Wolf, the former professional bowler. "I think the sky's the limit for us. We showed some flashes of greatness, and some of what I thought we would - we missed a lot of spares, we left a lot of pins out there, and that's something we're going to work on continuously throughout the season. It's not going to be fixed overnight, it's something that you just have to work on continuously. It's repetitions."

Ultimately, the Baker games are important to success on a given weekend, but the team games are what count towards national standings and recognitions, and that's where the Eagles shined. On the men's side, in a sport where a 300 is a perfect score, Caleb Wangler fired off an incredible 290, the best individual score of any athlete in the event all weekend. That was part of a team game where the Avila men collectively shot an 1,122 – the second-best score produced by any team all weekend – and defeated heads-up a Midland team that ended up finishing second in the entire event on their "home turf."

Elsewhere, Evan Serrage produced an average score of 203.4 in the five team games to pace the Avila men, just missing out on the event's top ten list. On the women's side, Devyn Coleman anchored the Eagles' efforts with an average of 179.2, a Top 25 finish among all females. Ultimately, the Avila women placed ninth out of 11 teams, while the men finished tenth out of 12, with both securing multiple head-to-head wins, and impressive start to the tenure of a brand-new program.

"I couldn't be prouder," Wolf said. "They kept their heads in it, they some great decisions, stayed focused and didn't pay attention to what was going on around them. It's an exciting event, and if you get caught up in the hoopla of everything that's going on around you, you can get distracted really easily, and both teams stayed focused and stayed in the moment, and it was a great learning experience for everybody."