The Ithaca Boys Bowling team punched its ticket to the state finals on Friday, by finishing 2nd at the Regional at Bay Lanes in Bay City. Ithaca started the day with 6 Baker games and found themselves in 5th place after finishing with a couple sub par games. Ithaca’s shot baker games of 188, 153, 168, 187, 153, and 126.
The Yellowjackets would bounce back in the 1st Peterson game shooting 1015 behind Preston Pitcher’s 244, Logan Coleman’s 233 and Riley Vernon’s 215. This game rocketed Ithaca into 2nd place, 30 pins out of 1st.
Ithaca would struggle early in the 2nd game but finish strong to salvage an 827 game, but would lose 53 more pins to the leader, St. Charles. Ithaca was led in game 2 by Vernon’s 191 game.
Lane rotations would put the top 3 teams side by side for the final game. St. Charles led Ithaca by 83 pins, and Breckenridge sat 3rd, 111 pins behind Ithaca. Ithaca and St. Charles battled it out the entire game, neither team able to take a substantial lead. In the end, Ithaca would win the game, 933-927, but only able to cut into St. Charles lead by 6 pins. Now the drama would switch to watching Breckenridge. The Huskies were on a roll and would shoot the high score for the day, 1022, coming up just 11 pins short of taking over 2nd place from Ithaca. Ithaca was led in the 3rd game by Vernon, 226, and Coleman, 189.
“We battled hard all day,” said Ithaca Coach Wally Schneider, “We could have really let the pressure get to us after struggling in the Baker games. Instead, the guys really stepped up and fired their best game of the year. We really got help from everyone on the team today. Izzy Baumann stepped up late in the day off the bench with a 173 game, Lucas Gruesbeck had a couple good games at 178 and 180, Aaron Warn was solid all day and Haden Avery stepped in and gave us some quality frames when people struggled. I am very happy to be going back to the state finals. With this team anything is possible.”
Ithaca, along with St. Charles and Breckenridge will face off next Friday in Lansing at Royal Scot Lanes in the State Finals.