WARREN, Ohio - The women's bowling team had a very strong showing competing in the American Heartland Conference Championships. The team's third place finish is the program's best finish in the conference championships and junior Nicole Corstange was named to the Honorable Mention All-Conference Team. After eight baker games of qualifying the team was seeded third and would receive a bye in the first round of the double-elimination bracket. They would defeat Siena Heights in their first match winning 4-1. In their second match they would face Youngstown State University. The team started off the match shooting a season-high 233 baker game and would go on to win the match 4-2.
Adrian won their side of the bracket and would face #14-ranked Davenport University with the winner advancing to the championship match. After getting off to a rough start and down 2-0, the team fought back and started off the third game stringing four strikes in a row finishing with a 220 game. Adrian would win that game making the match 2-1. Davenport would win the fourth game 207-179. Facing elimination Adrian rallied to shoot a 213, but it wouldn't be enough as Davenport fired off a 232 sending Adrian into the loser's bracket.
The team would have to wait almost two and a half hours for the matches in the loser's bracket to finish to see who they would face next. After the long wait, Adrian would bowl Michigan State University for the chance to move on to the championship match and face Davenport for the conference championship.
"Michigan State had a ton of momentum as they ran through the loser's bracket and in the match before we bowled them they had just shot a 279 game," said head coach Jody Fetterhoff. "We knew we would have to shoot big games to beat them but the team just couldn't get going quick enough."
The team struggled with their spare shooting and Michigan State would defeat them 3-0. "Overall I'm extremely happy with the team's performance and it gives us a lot of confidence heading into sectionals on March 11-13 in Allentown, Pa."
Three student-athletes on the bowling team were also honored this week by the National Collegiate Bowling Coaches Association to its 2010-11 Academic All-America Team. To be selected to the NCBCA team, a bowler must be a United States Bowling Congress collegiate athlete who has a minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.5 based on a 4.0 scale. More than 530 collegiate bowlers earned academic honors for the year. Chelsea Essenmacher, Janelle Post and Emily Gesell were members of the team to earn this distinction.
