COLLINSVILLE – The high school bowling season, at least for area boys, got under way Saturday morning with Collinsville hosting the Zach LeCuyer Memorial Invitational tournament at Camelot Bowl.
Thirty teams representing 21 schools took part in the season-opener, with teams rolling three games in a morning session, then playing three more games in the afternoon following a lunch break.
O’Fallon’s Gold team won the tournament with a pinfall of 5,503 for six games, with Jersey’s A side taking second at 5,526, Belleville East A third at 5,039, Salem A fourth at 4,980 and Collinsville Purple rounding out the top five at 4,921.
Other area teams taking part included Edwardsville A (10th at 4,673); Alton Red (12th at 2,012); Granite City (19th at 1,713); Alton Gray (23rd at 1,711); Jersey B (24th at 1,681); Edwardsville B (26th at 1,423); and Metro East Lutheran (27th at 1,406).
“It wasn’t our best effort, but it wasn’t our worse either,” said Redbird coach Jeff Woszczynski. “We had one of our top bowlers missing because of a family function, and we graduated three of our top players from last season (including Lucas Pejakovich, who is now bowling for Wichita State), but we did all right.
“The good thing is that, especially for our younger bowlers, they got a tournament and some experience under our belts, worked some nerves out of our system. Now we can focus on our form and our game. I do think we’ll get better as the season goes on; we didn’t do that well in this tournament last year and we wound up going to the state tournament, so there’s a long way to go.”
“I thought we did pretty well in the morning session,” said Edwardsville coach Craig Ohlau. “We qualified for the gold bracket (the top 10 teams after the morning session were placed in gold, silver and bronze groupings), but in the afternoon, we fell apart a bit. We’ve got to get better and pick up our spares; that’s the name of the game in bowling, being able to convert.
“It was our first tournament, though, and it’s the start of the season, so we’ve got time to get some work in and improve.”
“We’ve stepped it up for this season and we’ve got some experience,” said Warrior coach Melanie Williams. “We’ve got some kids who are going to mesh well together; we’re young, but we’re enthusiastic. We’ve got a lot of freshmen this year to go with Justin Simpson, so once we come together, we should do pretty well.”
“We’ve got some work to do on our games,” said MEL coach Bill Gass. “We had some spares that we should have made, but as long as we keep our heads up and keep working, we’ll be fine.
“We only had eight days of practice before the tournament, so we may still have some things to work out, but we have enough to be competitive; Joshua Gass and Grant Mitchell will be our top bowlers this year. We managed to get to the (IHSA) sectional last year and that’s what we want to at least do this year.”
O’Fallon’s Andrew Orr won the individual title with a pinfall of 1,185; Salem’s Troy Shults was second at 1,365, Collinsville Purple’s Clay Hartman was third at 1,162, Jersey A’s Jacob Freand was fourth at 1,147 and Highland’s Jordan Buske was fifth with 1,144.
Other area bowlers in the top 30 included Jersey A’s Brandon Handler (seventh at 1,121); Simpson (20th at 1,055); Alton Red’s Derek Henderson (24th at 1,032); Edwardsville A’s Kody Timmons (25th at 1,028); Jersey A’s Dane Farmer (26th at 1,021); and Jersey A’s Kevin Mangrum (30th in 1,008).
