Athletics Headlines: Bowling concludes Season Fifth at National Tournament

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April 23, 2007

Bowling concludes Season Fifth at National Tournament

The MBU Bowling team recently competed in the 2007 Intercollegiate Team Championships. This event saw the top 16 teams in the nation come together in Wichita, Kansas for a torturous three day event where athletes would bowl for an average of 10 hours per day. Missouri Baptist went into the competition ranked 14th in the nation and would bowl against such perennial powerhouse programs as Lindenwood University, Florida State University, Pikeville College, Saginaw Valley, and the ever present and number one team in the nation, the Shockers of Wichita State University. The first day consisted of 32 games of Baker competition. The Spartans bowled well the first half of the day, but, the latter portion of the first day brought trouble for a number of teams including MBU and the team ended where they started in the 14th seeded position. This would setup a match between Missouri Baptist and a powerful Florida State team which had just captured the 3rd seat in the tournament.

Day two consisted of a double elimination, bracketed draw. The Seminoles of FSU came out very confident, but the Spartans were up to the challenge. Despite a good start from FSU, the Spartans began match play on fire and defeated the Seminoles 4-1 in the best of seven series. The next opponents were the Lions of Lindenwood, who had barely slipped by Calument College. During the second match the MBU team bowled very well, however, Lindenwood was on a hot streak of their own. In five very close matches, Lindenwood relegated MBU to the loser’s portion of the bracket draw.

After a short break the teams were back in competition and the Spartans had the unenviable task of bowling the number two seed in the competition, Pikeville College. The first match was close with MBU pulling out the victory. In the second game the Spartans had a difficult lane condition and Pikeville won the game easily. Upset at their poor showing in the second game MBU redoubled their efforts and Pikeville never had a chance with MBU sweeping the next three games and eliminating Pikeville from competition. Morehead State University was the next team MBU would face and despite getting down 2-0, Missouri Baptist had no trouble sweeping the next four games and moving into the quarter finals to face Robert Morris University. The quarter finals games went back and forth with RMU taking the first and second games and MBU coming from behind to take the third. In the forth game MBU started extremely hot and RMU did very little and it looked as if the Spartans would tie the series at 2-2 but, a set of unfortunate breaks on the MBU side and some lucky bounces for Robert Morris left the Spartans in a 3-1 deficit in the match. Game four looked grim for the team as Robert Morris jumped out to a significant lead in the game but, some clutch strikes allowed MBU to come roaring back and take game five to edge the match to 3-2. Game five was a see-saw battle and came down to the final frame where Robert Morris made a bad shot and got very lucky when a split was broken up and all the pins fell for a strike forcing MBU to strike to keep the match going. Despite their performing in tight positions all day MBU fell a few pins short and the Spartans were eliminated in 5th place along with the other bracket quarter finals team eliminated, Wichita State.

The Missouri Baptist bowling team had another outstanding year and look to carry that forward into next season with seven first team players returning. MBU will say a fond farewell to graduating seniors, Robbie Winckel and Mike Peters; their final tournament turned out to be their finest hour in collegiate bowling.