CHS girls bowlers take tenth at state meet
By Mark Jurgena
As it should be, last weekend’s state tourney proved to be difficult for the Collinsville girls bowling team.
However, the Kahoks did manage to do well enough to place 10th on the first day of competition and advance to the final day of the tourney.
Collinsville could not move up the standings and ended up in the same place they began the day. The Kahoks took 10th place just behind Mascoutah.
Lockport (Twp.) won the title while the top team after one day, Joliet (West), took second place.
“The scores were down from years past,” said CHS coach Sean Hay. “With first place being below a 200 average, that’s not normal but everyone was throwing the same shot. We definitely did not throw our spare game the way we should’ve.
“We had trouble on the first day with consistent first shots. We were leaving multi-count spares. Those are harder to do, the more pins you have standing the harder it is to get them down.”
Out of the 30 games the Kahoks rolled Friday, only six of them were at 200 or above. Laila Jaoko rolled 247 and 202 for her top totals while Senior Sophie Tottleben rolled 234 for her top total.
“Those were probably our two main performers so far as individual games,” said Hay.
Caici Buckman rolled 211 while Emily Dahl came in at 204. Livia Montgomery came in with a 200.
The final day saw more of the same for CHS as only four of their 30 games were above 200.
Tottleben led the way with scores of 219 and 211 while Montgomery rolled a 203 game.
Jaoko fired the best game of the day with a 236 on her final one of the day.
“She had a little bit of struggle for a couple of games in the morning and then she got pulled when she got back in, she recovered very well,” said Hay about Jaoko. “She averaged about her season average for the tournament so that was a plus for her as well.”
Tottleben finished as the top bowler for CHS with a 2,242 total for the weekend while Montgomery was next at 1,947. Tottleben finished the tourney in 55th place.
Jaoko was next with 1,946 pins and Emily Dahl fired 1,919 for the two days.
“She had struggled this year with some timing issues and had some troubles with spares,” began Hay. “She got those fixed. She had come into the season ready to go and when the season started the way she was throwing the ball changed. She worked hard, I’ll give her all kinds of credit. When there’s a lot of adversity a lot of people will almost quit and that wasn’t her at all. She got herself back to where she looked before the season.”
Additionally, Buckman totaled out at 1,115.
Senior Cindy Freeman knocked down 895 pins during her time on the lanes.
“She did really well,” said Hay. “She came in and was one of our stronger bowlers for the second half.”
Journey Sampson totaled 344 and Taylor Mordis had 308.
“When you get teams that get up there and are not bowling as expected, sometimes the team turns on each other and that did not happen with this group at all,” said Hay. “In this case, they showed a lot of support for each other and they recognized that for everybody that it was challenging. They held themselves with poise and character.”
Senior Lida Bourgos of St. Charles (East) won the individual state title by 72 pins over senior Morgan LiCausi of Lockport. Vandalia Freshman Macy Jones took third overall.
