INTERCOLLEGIATE BOWLING
CHAMPIONSHIPS SECTIONAL

St. Clair Bowl, Fairview Heights, IL

By: Larry Vezina  

I attended one of four IBC sectional tournaments being held around the country. Fairview Heights is about 15 miles east of St. Louis, in the west-central part of Illinois. The bowling center is a little off the beaten path but has hosted their share of major events. The 2005 Illinois State Women's Championships are to be held later this year, and they have hosted both PBA and PWBA events. It is a 50-lane center, very attractive inside, and the staff there was excellent. I felt very welcomed.

This year, a singles event was held prior to the traditional Baker style team competition. The singles event was well attended with 92 men and 57 women participating. A non Sport Bowling compliant pattern was used for this event. It was the same pattern used for the 2005 Commonwealth Games. The lanes were stripped and conditioned separately and all 50 lanes were used for this event. For the tournament this year, we used Prodigy lane conditioner and Fizzion lane cleaner.

The scoring pace was quite good with 49% of the men and 14% of the women averaging over 200 for the six game competition. Top score for the men was Timothy Behrendt from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a score of 1396 or 196 over. The women's winner was Ariel Givens from the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore with a score of 1390 or 190 over. The top four of each of the men and women will advance to the national finals. It took 1366 to make the top four for the men and 1296 for the women.

Conditioning for the team competition began at 2:30 a.m. Saturday. Only 36 lanes had to be done since there were 11 women's teams and 15 men's teams competing in this sectional. I thought I was making great time as I had most of the lanes stripped by 3:05 a.m. Little did I know that my watch had stopped and it was actually 4:20 a.m. So much for finishing early! Anyway, when it was all said and done, even though the tournament was not sanctioned as such, the condition met the criteria to be Sport Bowling compliant.

Competition began promptly at 8:15 a.m. Surprisingly, at least to me, the men were not starting out very deep. In past competitions I had seen them starting around the 15 board at the arrows and ending up extremely deep by the end of the day. For this group, the average target for the first two games was around the 9-13 board at the arrows with not too much launch angle. The ball seldom went outside the 7 board at the break point. More predictably, the women started out further outside, with an average target of the 6-10 board at the arrows and virtually 0-degree launch angle. One notable exception was the top seeded Wichita State women. They shot 278 in their second game with 4 out of 5 players on the team playing outside of the 5 board!

By the time the teams got to the last few games of day one, the men had generally moved pretty deep. The more successful ones were playing around the 20-25 board at the arrows and not letting the ball go outside the 10 board at the break point. The women seemed to be more spread out in their choice of how to play the lanes. The average seemed to be around the 12-18 board at the arrows, but many were both inside and outside this area. The women seemed to be struggling more at the end of the day than the men.

After 32 Baker games, the Wichita State women had a commanding lead over the rest of the field. They were the only women's team to average 200 for the 32 games with a total of 6442, and were more than 500 pins ahead of their nearest rival, Lindenwood University, with a total of 5891. Rounding out the top four for the women were University of Maryland-Eastern Shore with a total of 5841, and University of Nebraska-Omaha with a total of 5746.

On the men's side the field was much tighter. Leading after the first day of competition was University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a score of 6645. Less than 100 pins behind was Wichita State with a score of 6565. Lindenwood University was in third with a score of 6492, and rounding out the top four was Indiana University with a score of 6444.

Sunday morning was pretty much a repeat of Saturday, with cleaning and conditioning running smoothly. The lanes were done by 7:00 a.m. and competition began at 7:45 a.m. Since I had to pack up my equipment to send back to Kegel, then had to catch a flight home, I was not able to see any of Sunday's competition. However, the results are in and the teams finished as follows:

Congratulations to all of the teams who earned their berths to Nationals.